Mines and Energy Minister, Tom Alweendo and his Zambian counterpart, Peter Kapala have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate a private sector led infrastructure development project aimed at building an oil and gas pipeline from the port of Walvis Bay to Zambia.
At the signing, Alweendo said if executed as planned, this project has the potential to unblock economic potential, not only for Namibia and Zambia; but for the SADC region as a whole.
“This project will be a great example of the regional cooperation as envisaged by the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan. This plan calls for more collaboration and less competition among the member countries. It is said that if you want to go fast, go it alone; but if you want to go far, go together. As a region, we need to go far.
“As we all know one of the biggest challenge we have on the African continent is access to energy – where more than 600 million Africans do not have access to energy. What we have on the continent is energy poverty. One of the contributing factor to the energy poverty we are all experiencing is lack of energy transport infrastructure. For some time, gas will become the most important source of energy on the continent, and therefore having gas pipeline to transport the gas more efficiently will be critical,” he said.
Regions such as Europe have extended oil and gas pipeline network. The EU pipeline network has a combined length of nearly 50 000 km.
“Although this is a private sector-led project, our two Governments do accept that our economies will grow and industrialize better and quicker when we have a strong private sector involvement. We also understand that our economies will flourish when there is collaboration between the Government and private sector.
“Hence our two Governments’ commitment to assist with this project. It is one thing to sign an MoU and it is another thing to ensure that it is implemented. The MoU makes provision for a joint technical committee that will be responsible to work with the private sector in identifying the exact assistance that will be needed. We urge those who will be serving on the technical committee to work diligently and to make it happen. We also hope that the private sector actors, both from Zambia and Namibia, will use their best endeavors to progress this project; and to know that you can count on our two Governments’ partnership,” he further said.