CAPE TOWN, South Africa, September 14, 2026/APO Group/ –Bokang D. Thitoyamore, CEO of Naledi Mining Services Company, has been confirmed as a speaker at the upcoming African Mining Week (AMW) 2026 conference, taking place from October 14-16 in Cape Town.

Thitoyamore will feature in the Strengthening Local Content in Africa’s Mining Supply Chain panel, exploring how mining companies can build strong partnerships with local businesses and integrate local content into operations. For Naledi Mining Services, AMW 2026 provides an ideal platform to highlight the company’s efforts to advance Botswana’s national agenda of expanding local participation, enhancing technical capacity and diversifying the economy beyond diamonds.

 




  

His participation comes as Botswana advances policy that aims to accelerate mining development and local content integration. Incoming Mines and Minerals Regulations are at the forefront of this effort, mandating robust local participation and in-country beneficiation. With exploration expanding across approximately 70% of the country’s unexplored territory, new mine developments will demand extensive engineering capacity, mine development expertise, equipment management and project delivery capabilities.

To meet this demand, Naledi Mining Services is scaling its training initiatives through the Naledi Mining Talent Bank, designed to equip Botswana’s next-generation of mining workers and entrepreneurs. The company is also positioning itself to export skilled labor regionally. In July 2026, Naledi signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Botswana’s Ministry of Labor and Home Affairs, facilitating skills transfer across the mining sector.

Beyond capacity building, Naledi is expanding its service capabilities as an EPC provider for large-scale mining operations across Southern Africa. A wholly owned subsidiary of Debswana Diamond Company, Naledi’s flagship asset is the Jwaneng Cut 9 Project – Botswana’s largest mining contract – spanning mine development, production, engineering, and equipment maintenance.

At AMW 2026, Thitoyamore is expected to share insights into how the company plans to expand both its operations and technical capabilities. Convening stakeholders from across the entire mining value chain, the event is held under the theme Mining the Future: Unearthing Africa’s Full Mineral Value.

Visit www.African-MiningWeek.com for more information.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, September 14, 2026/APO Group/ –With roughly 600 million Africans still lacking access to electricity and an annual sector financing gap reaching $95 billion, Africa cannot afford to let political friction disrupt its commercial energy agenda. Ahead of African Energy Week (AEW) 2026 in Cape Town, the African Energy Chamber (https://EnergyChamber.org/) is calling on continental leaders to safeguard cross-border investment, streamline visa-free travel while prioritizing economic sovereignty over diplomatic division.

 




  

AEW stands today as the largest and Africa’s most consequential platforms for investment, financing, and practical cooperation in energy. Taking place in Cape Town on October 12 to 16, 2026, the gathering is expected to bring together more than 10,000 delegates from over 100 countries. That scale alone makes clear this is not a narrow industry meeting; it is a continental convening with global reach.

We recognize the seriousness of the current diplomatic tensions between Nigeria and South Africa and we condemn any violence or mistreatment of African migrants. But this moment must not be allowed to shut the door on dialogue, investment and practical cooperation across the continent.

Energy is one of the few sectors capable of bringing Africans together around shared growth, jobs, industrial development and regional integration. It must not be treated as collateral damage in a broader political dispute. The commercial ties between Nigeria and South Africa are too important, and the broader network of African energy relationships is too valuable, to be weakened by the heat of the moment.

AEW is organized by the African Energy Chamber in partnership with Afreximbank and the African Petroleum Producers Organization, institutions that have worked with determination to advance African energy sovereignty and African-led solutions to African challenges. The African Energy Chamber is not merely hosting a conference; it is leading a movement for African ownership, African industry and African progress.

This movement is needed because the continent still faces a hard and unforgiving truth. According to the International Energy Agency, roughly 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity and about 900 million remain without access to clean cooking. This is not a statistic to be filed away and forgotten. It is a development emergency that affects children studying by candlelight, mothers cooking over dangerous fuels, hospitals struggling with power reliability and businesses forced to operate beneath the weight of inadequate infrastructure.

Africa also continues to face a major energy financing gap, with recent reporting placing the annual shortfall at between $67.5 billion and $95 billion. If Africa is to power its people, industrialize its economies and secure its future, then Africans must fight to fix it with capital, with policy discipline, and with the courage to back the projects that will deliver real value on African soil.

The question before the continent is plain enough: will we embrace innovation, growth, and prosperity, or will we slide backward into a posture that denies facts and delays demand? Africa does not need less energy. Africa needs more energy, more generation, more infrastructure, more refining, more gas and more investment to meet the needs of its people and economies. That is why the call for more investment in exploration remains so urgent. DRILL BABY DRILL.

African Energy Week exists to meet that urgency. It brings governments, operators, financiers and service companies into one room to unlock capital and move projects from paper to production. Previously, AEW has demonstrated that this platform is not about rhetoric; it is about results, partnerships and deal-making that move African energy forward.

The 2026 gathering reflects that growing confidence. Delegations and participation are expected from across Africa and beyond, including countries in every major region of the global energy market.  That breadth matters, because Africa’s energy future is not a local matter alone; it is a continental priority with global significance.

Africa must also do more to trade with itself. Intra-African trade remains far too low, representing only about 15 to 18 percent of the continent’s total trade in recent years, compared with far higher levels in Asia and Europe. The African Continental Free Trade Area offers a path toward stronger integration, and recent analysis suggests it could significantly expand trade if African states remove the barriers that still stand in the way. But trade cannot flourish in a continent where movement remains too difficult and markets remain too fragmented.

That is why African leaders must move with urgency to fix visa-free travel. If Africa is serious about integration, then Africans must be able to do business in Africa, study in Africa, work in Africa and build in Africa without being trapped by unnecessary border friction. Free movement is not a luxury. It is infrastructure for prosperity.

This moment should also be used to expand opportunity for young Africans, especially in energy, engineering, and STEM. Africa’s future will be written by engineers, geoscientists, technicians, coders, project managers, data analysts, and entrepreneurs who can turn natural resources into schools, roads, factories, industrial parks, and jobs. If the continent is serious about prosperity, then it must give African entrepreneurs the tools they need to succeed access to capital, fairer taxation, streamlined regulation, and an environment that rewards initiative rather than suffocates it.

Cape Town remains a safe and welcoming host city for AEW, and the conference should be embraced as a practical meeting ground for the continent’s energy leaders. The goal is simple: keep business moving, keep investment flowing and keep Africa focused on its own development agenda.

“Sometimes leadership requires us not to run from discomfort, but to walk through it with our heads held high and our purpose intact. There is value in staying the course, even when the road is rough. We must move through this pain honestly, soberly, and together, then regroup with clearer minds and steadier hands. What we must avoid now are rushed choices, emotional overcorrections, and decisions we may regret long after tempers have cooled,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber

This is a call for unity, discipline and restraint. It is also a reminder that African leadership must be measured not by how quickly it retreats from difficulty, but by how faithfully it walks through it. The African Energy Chamber welcomes this new opportunity to continue pushing to unify the continent through trade, investment, energy cooperation, and shared purpose.

Africa does not build prosperity by closing doors. It builds prosperity by keeping them open to capital, commerce, and collaboration. Energy is business. Energy is development. Energy is sovereignty. And it should never be allowed to become the casualty of political division.

LAGOS, Nigeria, September 14, 2026/APO Group/ –When Nigeria first joined the World Energy Council in April 1960, the country was months away from independence, and its modern energy industry was still taking shape. More than six decades later, Nigeria has returned to the organisation as a Member Committee at a moment when both the country’s energy sector and the global conversation it is rejoining look markedly different.

 




  

The governing board of the World Energy Council’s Nigerian Member Committee was inaugurated in Abuja on 7 August, formally restoring Nigeria’s participation in the global body. The committee is chaired by Abdulrazaq Isa, co-founder of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited, while Bala Wunti, formerly Chief HSE Officer at NNPC Limited, serves as Chief Executive Officer. Its board brings together figures from policy, academia, energy institutions and private enterprise, including Professor Wumi Iledare, Dr Mustapha Abdullahi, Mrs Aisha Farida Katagum, Dr Emmanuel Okon, Dr Victor Ekpenyong, Dr Imamuddeen Talba and Dr Ainojie Alex Irune, Managing Director of Oando Energy Resources and Executive Director of Oando PLC.

The Nigeria returning to the Council is substantially different from the country that first joined it. Over the intervening decades, Nigeria has developed into one of Africa’s largest oil and gas producers, built a significant domestic energy industry and seen indigenous companies move from relatively limited participation in the upstream sector to acquiring and operating substantial portfolios previously controlled by international oil companies.

That evolution has accelerated over the last decade as international majors have reshaped their Nigerian portfolios and local companies have assumed greater responsibility for producing assets. The composition of the new WEC Nigeria board reflects some of that history.

Isa has spent nearly three decades building Waltersmith, while other members bring experience across government, petroleum economics, engineering, renewables and energy operations. Irune, 45, represents another part of the indigenous energy story, having built much of his career during the period when Nigerian companies significantly expanded their upstream ambitions.

His career has unfolded alongside that transformation. A computer scientist with a doctorate from the University of Nottingham, Irune began in technology and automotive research in the United Kingdom before returning to Nigeria. At Oando, his career moved through corporate communications, strategy and upstream operations as the company itself evolved into a significant indigenous upstream player.

He was involved in the organisational transition following Oando’s $1.5 billion acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ Nigerian upstream business in 2014 and subsequently served as Group Chief Strategy and Corporate Services Officer during a period of restructuring. A decade later, as Managing Director of Oando Energy Resources, he led the completion of Oando’s $783 million acquisition of Nigerian Agip Oil Company from Eni.

In many respects, Irune’s career has become a microcosm of what has happened to the Nigerian energy industry over the last decade-plus: greater indigenous participation gave way to greater ownership, and ownership has increasingly brought responsibility for operatorship, investment and institution-building.

Nigeria’s return to the World Energy Council is taking place against an equally significant change in the global energy conversation. Energy security and affordability now sit alongside the challenge of reducing emissions, while emerging economies continue to argue that transition pathways must account for different levels of development and energy access.

For Nigeria, those tensions are immediate. The country possesses substantial hydrocarbon resources while facing significant domestic energy and infrastructure needs. It is seeking greater investment in its energy sector while also navigating the implications of a global transition towards lower-carbon energy systems. Nigeria’s renewed participation in the Council will therefore depend on the experience and perspective it brings to that debate.

Irune has increasingly argued that Africa’s energy transition must be grounded in the continent’s economic realities, with greater energy access and industrialisation central to its approach. He has also made the case for gas as an important development fuel and for indigenous companies to retain more of the value created from African resources. Those arguments will now sit within a broader Nigerian contribution.

More than six decades after first joining the World Energy Council, Nigeria returns with considerably more operating experience of its own, a larger indigenous energy industry, and a different set of questions about what its resources should deliver for its economy.