Greetings from Dubai Expo 2020

Dear reader, let me immediately apologise if per the heading of today’s piece, I have inadvertently misled you into thinking I am currently sitting on a sidewalk somewhere in Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, munching on dates and sipping non-alcoholic champagne with a super-rich sheikh, while negotiating a mouth-watering deal for the energy sector; if you are envious with that assumption, please save your emotions.

The reality is that I am writing from my humble living room in Kwabenya, Accra, late at night with only a mug of steaming green tea for company, while in the background, France24 has the Russian-Ukraine story on with wall-to-wall coverage, micro-analysing it to death from every possible angle.

Expo

As a matter of fact, the greetings I offer are on behalf of my colleagues at the Ministry of Energy currently in Dubai with the Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, for the Dubai Expo 2020.

On the theme “connecting minds, creating the future”, EXPO 2020, which started on October 1, 2021 and ends on March 31, 2022, is the first to be held in the Arab world, gathering about 200 country participants.

Ghana’s energy sector players are confident that Ghana can make the most out of this strategic gathering.

Dubbed by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), lead organisers of Ghana’s participation in the EXPO, as the ‘Energy Month’, March will be used to position Ghana’s energy sector favourably in the minds of investors and decision-makers.

The ministry and its sector agencies at the EXPO are showcasing Ghana’s energy potential in the upstream, downstream and renewable energy sectors with strong emphasis on the 2030 Petroleum Hub agenda, by which Ghana aspires to become a hub for refined petroleum products in the West African sub-region and beyond by the year 2030.

The recently established Petroleum Hub Development Corporation is in line with the vision for this exciting, forward-looking sector.

The hub involves the development of infrastructure such as refineries, port terminal facilities, storage facilities, petrochemical plants as well as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals with a network of pipelines and will use 20,000 acres generously donated by the Western Nzema Traditional Council in the Western Region.

Presidential seal

On Saturday, March 5, 2022, the ministry hosted an investor forum, where sector agencies used the opportunity to pitch for investment into their various sectors.

The forum was attended by Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Alhaji Ahmed Ramadan, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GIPC and leading figures of the investor community in the UAE.

There will also be one-on-one sessions between Ghana’s energy sector CEOs and prospective investors.

Making a case for the ministry’s sector agencies, Dr Prempeh made the point that “they are able to demonstrate Ghana’s hydrocarbon potential evident in acreages for exploration, farm-in opportunities as well as the rapid expansion of our gas market, among other important areas of the petroleum industry”.

Today is ‘Ghana Day’ at the event, and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to address a business forum organised by the GIPC in close partnership with the Ministry of Energy.

The President is also expected to highlight strongly, the numerous opportunities in the energy sector, as well as other areas of the economy.

All these events are strategically geared towards making Ghana attractive to the investor community at the EXPO.

Beyond these events, the ministry has scheduled rotationally, the use of the Ghana pavilion by the sector agencies until the end of the month.

Energy transition context

This important event currently taking place in the UAE to drive investment into our petroleum industry sits within the interesting context of the global conversation around energy transition.

Indeed, recently the Vice-President, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, launched the National Energy Transition Forum in Accra and made the important point that Ghana took cognisance of the need to move away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner sources of energy, to protect the environment, among others, and set out important steps the country had taken in that regard.

But in echoing the President’s statement at the Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, the United Kingdom (UK) in November 2021, the Vice- President noted that “In as much as we want to contribute to reducing emissions, we are of the view that a balance must be struck and maintained among our social, economic and environmental requirements.

“Consequently, we must seek solutions that are equitable and fair considering some countries have emitted so much carbon in their development process whereas other countries at the onset of development have emitted negligible quantities and are likely to scale up in pursuit of their development goals.”

The stark reality then is that while energy transition is an imperative none of us can run away from, it would also be unacceptable to expect developing countries with oil deposits that could catalyse their development agenda to abandon them and risk sitting on stranded assets.

Developing nations must not be stampeded into transitioning at the same rate as others because, the needs, the realities and exigencies are just not the same.

Balance

What this means for Ghana is that while we pursue a clean energy agenda through harnessing the share of modern renewable energy (wind, solar, Waste to Energy, Small/Medium hydropower, hydrogen, etc.) in the national energy mix, among others, we must also keep an eye on exploiting our God-given oil resources and leveraging on them for the benefit of our people.

After all, it is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, and it ought not to be a binary situation here.

Dr Prempeh has shown strong leadership since assuming the energy portfolio a year ago and I believe he and his team will be hugely successful in drawing in the requisite investment to help grow this critical sector.

On a personal note, if I am ever lucky to bump into a rich sheikh any time I am in Dubai, I will fill you in on all the sizzling details, otherwise, I am afraid you will have to contend with photographs of me on a camel, in full ‘jalabiyah’ and kaffiyeh, wandering somewhere in the Arabian Desert.

Did you just mutter ‘poor camel’?

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng, E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com