The conversation around local content in Africa is beginning to move beyond individual countries trying to build capacity on their own. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now looking to Nigeria for lessons.

A high-level delegation from the country, led by its Minister of Hydrocarbons, His Excellency Simplice Stev Onanga, has arrived in Nigeria for a study tour of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and the structures that have supported the growth of local participation in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.

The visit comes as African oil-producing countries continue to grapple with a familiar question: how can the value created by their natural resources translate into stronger domestic businesses, jobs and industrial capacity? Nigeria’s experience offers one possible model.

Receiving the delegation in Abuja on Monday, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, said the country had achieved 61 percent local content capacity since the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act 16 years ago.

He described the engagement as part of Nigeria’s commitment to sharing its experience with other African countries, particularly through the African Petroleum Producers Organisation (APPO).

“The solution to Africa’s energy challenges lies within Africa,” Lokpobiri said, noting that Nigeria currently produces more than 1.8 million barrels of crude oil per day.

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The minister also pointed to the changing ownership landscape in Nigeria’s oil industry as evidence of growing indigenous participation. As international oil companies have divested some onshore assets, Nigerian companies including Renaissance Africa Energy Company, Seplat Energy Producing Unlimited and Oando Energy Resources Nigeria Limited have taken positions in assets previously operated by international companies.

According to Lokpobiri, while foreign companies continue to dominate deep offshore operations, Nigerian operators and service companies have gained greater control of land and shallow-water assets. That transition is part of what the DRC delegation has come to understand.

Nigeria’s local-content framework goes beyond requiring companies to use Nigerian workers or suppliers. It has developed into an institutional system involving regulation, funding, capacity development and monitoring.

One of the mechanisms supporting the system is the Nigerian Content Development Fund, financed through a 1% levy on awarded upstream oil and gas contracts. The fund is intended to support the development of Nigerian businesses and capacity within the industry.

For the DRC, understanding how these structures work in practice may be as important as studying the regulations themselves.

NCDMB Executive Secretary, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe, represented by the Board’s Director of Corporate Services, Dr Abdulmalik Halilu, said NCDMB was ready to support the DRC as it develops its own local-content framework.

He pointed to Nigeria’s institutional structures, regulatory coordination and its 10-year strategic roadmap, which targets 70% in-country value retention and more than 300,000 direct jobs by 2027.

For the visiting delegation, the attraction is the opportunity to see these structures beyond policy documents. Minister Onanga described Nigeria’s experience as significant and said the delegation was in the country to see what had been achieved firsthand.

“We are proud to be in Nigeria to witness what has been accomplished,” he said.

The study tour will continue until Friday, taking the delegation beyond government offices and into parts of the industry where local content is expected to translate into actual economic activity.

The programme includes visits to the NCDMB headquarters in Bayelsa State, fabrication workshops in the Onne Free Zone, an NLNG supplier session, the University of Port Harcourt Gas Centre, and the LADOL/Nigerdock yards, alongside other engagements.

Those visits could provide the most practical lessons of the trip: what happens when local-content policy moves from legislation into fabrication yards, supply chains, training centres and operating businesses.

For Nigeria, the visit is also a reminder that the country’s local-content experience is increasingly becoming a reference point within Africa.

The DRC will ultimately have to build a framework suited to its own industry, institutions and economic realities. But rather than starting from scratch, it is choosing to study a system that has been developing in Nigeria for more than a decade.

Meiza Nigeria