By: Zahid Jadwat

Ceratin oil-rich African countries have an opportunity to score big from Europe’s potential energy crisis, according to a business expert.

“Big fortunes, they say, are made in times of misfortune,” says African Business specialist Victor Kgomoeswana.

Looking back at the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw online platforms like Zoom register record users as people began working and learning from home, Kgomoeswana said: “You saw what COVID-19 did – stocks like Zoom were relatively unknown before COVID and now they are multibillion-dollar enterprises”.

“Africa does have the oil reserves. Every country that has oil is bound to have natural gas. If you go by the proven oil reserves in Africa, you’ll find countries like Libya and Nigeria in the top 10 in the world. If you go down the chart, you find many other countries, like Tanzania, Gabon [and] Ghana, that have just recently got into the game have not been showing up on the list because they haven’t done the exploration,” he said. 

Kgomoeswana said the presence of oil and gas go hand-in-hand. “Natural gas and oil go together because both of them are hydrocarbons. They are formed literally from the gases that originate from the dead bodies of plants and animals over millions of years.”

Last week, Italy signed a deal with Angola to ramp up gas supplies from the southern African country as it scrambles to break away from Russian gas over the Ukraine war. Other European countries, such as Poland, have been exploring alternative supplies after Russia ceased its supply on Wednesday (April 27).

“Today we have reached another important agreement with Angola to increase gas supplies,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said in a statement.

“We do not want to depend on Russian gas any longer, because economic dependence must not become political subjection,” said Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Angola is the second-largest oil-producing country in sub-Saharan Africa and an OPEC member, with an output of approximately 1.3 million barrels of oil per day.