I arrived Félix-Houphouët-Boigny International Airport at 3am, in the morning, looking forward to seeing the lay of the land in the next several days and talking to a number of people about the looming hydrocarbon boom.

It had been 24 years since my last visit.

This early May 2024 trip had been prompted by three discoveries of hydrocarbon accumulations, estimated at over 7Billion barrels of crude oil and gas equivalent in place in water depths ranging from 1,200 to 2,700 metres.

Nowhere else has this scale of discovery happened in Africa in the last 10 years than in Namibia, which now hosts the largest constellation of hydrocarbon super majors on the planet.

In the late 1990s, Cote d’Ivoire promised the world it would be a hub of oil and gas activity in the medium term.

It didn’t happen.