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TotalEnergies Brings its African Exploration Engine to AEW 2026 as New Frontier Growth Accelerates Across the Continent
African Energy Week (AEW) 2026 will bring together one of the most influential upstream delegations on the continent as TotalEnergies underscores Africa’s central role in its global exploration and production strategy. The company’s participation will include Mike Sangster, Senior Vice President – Africa - head of the delegation - alongside Nicola Mavilla, Senior Vice President – Exploration; Mariam Nampeera, Deputy Managing Director, TotalEnergies EP Uganda; Aurélie Clavé, Vice President – Deep Offshore; and Magali Pailhé, Managing Director, TotalEnergies EP South Africa, among others.
Across multiple basins – from the Orange Basin offshore Namibia to the Albertine Graben in Uganda – the French major is weaving a continental-scale portfolio that blends frontier exploration, long-cycle development and production optimization into a single strategic arc.
In Namibia, TotalEnergies sits at the center of one of the world’s most significant deepwater exploration stories, anchored by its operated Venus discovery in Block 2913B, which has been pivotal in redefining the Orange Basin’s global relevance. Together with follow-on discoveries such as Mopane and wider basin activity, Venus has helped transform Namibia into a frontier hotspot and accelerated industry expectations around development timelines, FIDs and long-term production capacity. The company’s continued presence through key licenses including PEL83 and stakes in PEL104 reinforces its commitment to a basin now firmly on the global energy map.
At the same time, East Africa continues to represent a critical development axis. Uganda’s upstream sector, anchored by the Tilenga project and its integration with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, is moving steadily toward first oil, positioning the country as a new entrant in Africa’s producing landscape. As Uganda edges closer to first oil, the project stands as a benchmark for large-scale infrastructure delivery in frontier markets, balancing complex engineering execution with environmental considerations and multi-stakeholder coordination. Across East Africa, it reflects how TotalEnergies is embedding itself not only as an operator, but as a long-term industrial partner shaping the region’s upstream foundation.
Deepwater engineering and offshore execution remain another defining pillar of the company’s African operations. As developments move into increasingly complex reservoirs and ultra-deepwater environments, technological capability and project execution capacity are becoming as important as exploration success itself. This is particularly evident offshore Angola, where TotalEnergies is not only advancing major sanctioned developments such as Kaminho, but is also actively positioning for the next wave of growth through newly acquired frontier acreage in ultra-deepwater Blocks 40, 41, 42 and 58, reinforcing its long-term ambition to sustain Angola as a core deepwater production base well into the next decade.
“TotalEnergies continues to demonstrate that Africa is not just part of its portfolio – it is a core pillar of its global strategy. Their leadership presence at AEW 2026 reflects the scale of opportunity on the continent and the importance of sustained investment in African energy development and specifically exploration,” said NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber.