It is the first time for me to attend the Africa Oil Week Conference in Cape Town. And it will also be my last. For the time being at least.
Not because it will be the last Africa Oil Week. It is because the conference is moving to Accra in Ghana next year.
A bold move, according to many people I spoke to over the last couple of days.
Apart from a good conference venue, Cape Town has many other attractions that draw people to the city, such as Table Mountain towering high above the town’s skyscrapers, Robben Island, the penguins, Cape of Good Hope, and of course being a hub for embarking on a safari or wine tour nearby. Does Accra have the same attraction? I have not heard people speaking too loudly about it.
I hear one of the main reasons for moving the conference to Accra is that a similar event, Africa Energy Week, also settled down in Cape Town over the past few years, forming another draw for people from the energy sector to go to. And because it is not getting easier to get approval from management to go to multiple events a year, as a seasoned conference organizer told me, it is not entirely unexpected that AOW, which is celebrating its 30th this year, has decided to move to another location. Under new leadership as well, as Hyve Events sold the ownership of the conference to Sankofa Events just before this year’s edition. Paul Sinclair, who has been a familiar face of AOW for five years, will head up the new outfit.
But what about the West African Energy Summit, which took place in Accra for the first time this year? Will there not be a clash with this event? “No”, according to a representative of OGV, the organizer behind the West African Energy Summit. In contrast, the events will be organized in parallel with each other next year, with AOW focusing on the exploration and development part of the business whilst the West Africa Summit will have a more downstream and supply-chain focus.
“Sometimes, organizing parallel events which can both be attended at the same time forms a powerful way to attract people”, confirmed someone to me. Whether this can beat the attractiveness and ease of travel to Cape Town, we shall see next year, when the first results of this bold move will emerge.
