The launch of Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been delayed once again and is now scheduled for November instead of September, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, a body promoting the continent’s oil and gas sector. Experts who spoke to Climate Home News say the delay raises doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects, its main objective, as international lenders withdraw from such investments over climate concerns.
Many African leaders have made it clear that they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s vast oil and gas reserves, estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and more than 600 trillion cubic feet of gas, to boost economic growth. As a group, Africa sided with powerful oil-producing countries in blocking progress in negotiations on a global roadmap for moving away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 conference, although some countries individually supported the proposal.
In 2022, at a meeting of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in Angola, ministers from member states approved a resolution to establish Africa Energy Bank to finance projects involving the production, use and trade of oil, natural gas and broader energy sources. APPO’s website says the bank was designed to overcome the international community’s “disillusionment” with fossil fuels, which crystallised around the concept of the “energy transition”.
Former Shell and Gunvor executive Said Addi explained that the new bank was considered necessary because many traditional international lenders have reduced their financing of hydrocarbons. He said it was not simply another fund supporting oil and gas, but an effort to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed.
The bank, a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank), has faced several delays and is almost two years behind its original schedule. The initial plan was to launch in January 2025 with headquarters in Nigeria, but the launch was moved to June that year to allow the offices in Abuja to be completed. After the offices were announced as complete in late November 2025, a new date was set for January 2026, then moved to April, June and September, and now to November.
Addi noted that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially sound, the delays will be seen as normal difficulties in getting a multilateral institution off the ground. He added, however, that scepticism would be justified if the launch continued to be delayed. Oil and gas expert Baron Lamarré was more categorical: he said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal” and that if the schedule slipped again, the narrative would shift from “an ambitious institution finding its feet” to “a good idea that lost momentum before it found any”.
Africa Energy Bank is targeting a capital base of $5 billion, with plans to reach $120 billion within five years by mobilising private sector capital, although it is expected to launch with initial capital of $500 million. Under the plan, APPO’s 18 members will each contribute $83 million in equity, or $1.5 billion in total, while Afreximbank, other African countries outside APPO and investors from outside the continent are expected to cover the remaining $3.5 billion. However, even the first $500 million has not been easy to raise.
In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to fulfil their commitments towards the launch target before the end of June, but the delays suggest this may not have been achieved. Lamarré said each postponement showed that “raising capital for fossil fuels in Africa without the major companies and their financing networks is extremely difficult”. Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have steadily moved away from African hydrocarbons, while oil giants have been selling their African assets to smaller local operators with lower credit ratings.
Lamarré added that if raising the first $500 million had taken so long, this was the clearest indication of how steep the climb to $120 billion appeared, given that the continent’s energy financing gap amounts to $30 billion to $45 billion a year. Meanwhile, according to the World Investment Report 2026 from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), foreign direct investment in Africa fell from its 2024 record but remained around a third above the long-term average in 2025, concentrated in critical minerals for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
Climate activists criticised the bank’s main objective of financing oil and gas at a time when the world is beginning to move away from carbon-based fuels. Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse” and warned that it risked trapping Africa in a new cycle of debt, dependence and fossil fuel entrenchment. Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the plan to finance oil and gas was a “misplaced priority” and that the bank should support clean energy. He proposed reversing its objective to help oil-dependent countries draw up transition plans.
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