By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has called for a regional benchmark that better reflects West Africa’s market realities, saying petroleum product prices in Nigeria and other African countries should not be automatically driven by crises in Western Europe and the Mediterranean.

“If we look at the refining capacity on the continent and how it has been increasing, it simply doesn’t make sense that if there is a problem in Western Europe or in the Mediterranean, it is going to affect our pricing in Africa.

“There may be issues which have absolutely nothing to do with what is going on here. And prices should be determined on the basis of geopolitical issues, demand and supply, and complexities within the market. So we feel this is a great opportunity for Africa, and West Africa in particular, to really have something that is specific to us.

“If we have a problem, it is reflected in the pricing. If we don’t have a problem, then we are to be shielded to an extent, I would say, from what is going on in other locations,” the chief executive of the NMDPRA, Mr Rabiu Umar, said this on Tuesday at the second West Africa Refined Fuel Market Conference in Abuja.

The conference is jointly hosted by the Authority, S&P Global Commodity Insights and West Africa Regulator Forum, with the theme Funding West Africa Infrastructure & Distribution to Create a Transparent Market for Regional Price Benchmarks and featured regulators, refiners, traders, financiers and other industry stakeholders renewed efforts to establish a transparent regional pricing system for refined petroleum products.

Mr Umar said West Africa needed a pricing system based on its own supply, demand, inventory, logistics, refining and trading conditions, adding that the objective was not to isolate Nigeria from the international petroleum market but to ensure that regional prices accurately reflected the realities of the market being served.

The NMDPRA boss said the push for a regional benchmark was not simply about publishing another price but creating an entire market structure capable of generating credible and transparent price discovery.

“Last year, our focus was on establishing the foundation. This year, our focus must be on execution,” he said.

He said the roadmap required reliable financing, refinery capacity, stronger logistics and storage networks, interconnected ports, roads, rail and pipelines, harmonised product regulations and standards, transparent market data, stronger cross-border cooperation and regional and international capital.

“A reference price is not by itself a trading hub. A conference is not a market. Regulatory cooperation, important as it is, cannot substitute for physical infrastructure, commercial liquidity, market information, and operational excellence on which a credible trading hub must stand.

“Africa possesses resources. Africa possesses demand. Africa possesses refining capacity, and that is also expanding. What we must now build is the infrastructure that efficiently connects all three,” he quipped.

He also identified differences in petroleum product specifications across countries as another obstacle to cross-border trade.

“We also have the second issue of what is the quality of products. What is the specification of products from one country to another? We cannot have from here to Nigeria, to Ghana, to the United Republic, even our right-next-door neighbours having different products and specifications. What that does is that it makes trading across the border very, very difficult.”

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) is developing a platform to aggregate small and distributed renewable energy projects across Nigeria into larger investment opportunities capable of attracting institutional investors.

The initiative seeks to address a major financing challenge in Nigeria’s energy transition, where individual renewable energy projects are often too small or fragmented to attract large-scale institutional capital.

By pooling the projects into a single investment structure, the wealth fund aims to create assets with greater scale and clearer risk profiles, making them easier for institutional investors to assess and finance.

The approach could also help attract international capital by placing domestic institutional funding alongside private and foreign investments, while providing investors with greater confidence in projects exposed to Nigeria’s regulatory, currency, infrastructure and commercial risks.

The financing need is significant, with Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan estimating that about $410 billion will be required by 2060 to support the country’s transition to cleaner energy.

The NSIA’s aggregation model therefore seeks to move beyond financing individual projects towards building renewable energy portfolios that can unlock deeper pools of institutional capital.

The initiative will be relevant to discussions at the Nigeria NOW! Global Investors Expo, scheduled for November 19 and 20 at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja, where mining, infrastructure, finance and fiscal reforms will be among the key investment themes.

The expo will focus on mining, infrastructure, finance and Nigeria’s fiscal reforms, reflecting the broader conditions that determine whether investment opportunities can move from proposals to commercially viable projects.

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

The sextet of Onlinebanker, Adetunji Films, More Branches TV, Wearegst, Iswellthecapitalist and The Republic have been selected for the Emerging News Voices Growth Lab organised by Google News Initiative (GNI).

The six Nigerian independent news creators are among roughly 20 emerging news creators from across the region taking part in the multi-month virtual programme, which runs through late September 2026.

Over the course of the programme, participants work directly with Google trainers and product experts across four areas:

AI in the newsroom: hands-on integration of Google’s AI tools, including Gemini, NotebookLM, Google Trends and SynthID, into daily workflows for research, transcription, translation and verification.

Video and audience growth: practical frameworks for building YouTube channels, using both Shorts and long-form video to reach new audiences.

Direct reader relationships: strengthening open web presence and newsletters to build first-party audiences the newsroom owns.

Sustainable revenue: sessions on monetisation strategy, product differentiation and audience growth models.

“Independent news creators and digital-native newsrooms are shaping how Africans, and Nigerians in particular, find and understand the news.

“The Growth Lab gives these creators what growing newsrooms need most: practical AI skills, a clear video and audience strategy, direct relationships with their readers and a path to sustainable revenue.

“When emerging voices build capability and financial independence, the whole news ecosystem becomes more resilient, diverse and sustainable,” the News Partnerships Lead for the Middle East and Africa at Google, Marianne Erasmus, stated.

Commenting on being part of the cohort, the Editor-in-Chief of The Republic, Mr Wale Lawal, said, “Google’s Emerging News Voices Growth Lab is giving us practical ways to combine audience insight, product thinking and the responsible use of AI as we build a more sustainable future for The Republic’s journalism.”

Also speaking, his counterpart at MoreBranches, Mr Nasir Achile Ahmed, said, “The program has been valuable to our newsroom, providing information that validates observations we’d made previously, as well as access to tools and the knowledge to use them effectively. Beyond that, engaging with experts and fellow journalists has created a supportive environment that is helping us strengthen our storytelling.”

Creator-led digital journalism is changing how Nigerians, especially younger audiences, find and consume news. Social-first channels and digital-native platforms increasingly drive news discovery, yet the newsrooms behind them often run lean, with limited access to the tools, training and revenue expertise available to established publishers. The GNI Growth Lab is built to close that gap.

The Growth Lab grew out of the Global News Gap Project, a continent-wide mapping of independent African news creators conducted with Project Oasis and Code for Africa, which identified where emerging newsrooms most need support.

The Growth Lab is the latest step in Google’s continued support for Nigerian media. Since 2018, Google has funded newsroom transformation projects through the GNI, helped publishers grow advertising revenue through the Ad Manager Academy, and shared ad revenue with Nigerian publishers through Google AdSense and Google Ad Manager.

Since 2024 alone, Google has trained more than 1,500 Nigerian journalists and editors in online safety, advanced Search, digital verification and audience analytics. Google also supports media skilling through its collaboration with the MTN Media Innovation Programme, where fellows receive hands-on sessions on AI as a productivity partner and on newsroom technology, from News Consumer Insights to Gemini.