At the beginning of July, David Blanchard stepped down from his two-year term as Africa Region president. These have been rewarding yet challenging years for our Region as we all have tried to weather the latest petroleum industry downturn — one of many that most of us have experienced. Under Dave's leadership and guidance the Region accomplished a great deal — and fortunately, he will continue in an advisory role as immediate past president.

We have continued to grow our Young Professional (YP) and Student Chapter programs, and the Africa Region continues to conduct one of the most extensive and competitive Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) programs in all of AAPG. The Distinguished Lecture (DL) series and Visiting Geoscientist Program (VGP) are reaching increasing numbers of countries and universities across the continent and are perhaps two of our best ways to expose larger numbers of our colleagues to some of the benefits of AAPG.

The Africa Region can be proud of all of these accomplishments, and we all thank Dave and the past leadership team for their hard work to help make all of this happen.

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These last few years also have seen a renaissance in AAPG's involvement in technical meetings across Africa. The relationship between our affiliated society, the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE), and AAPG remains strong, and our members take active roles in the NAPE annual ICE held each fall in Lagos. At the moment the president of NAPE, Mr. Nosa Omorodion, is a past president of the AAPG Africa Region.

Joint activities between NAPE and AAPG will remain an important aspect of our western Africa program during the coming years.

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Another affiliated organization, the Egyptian Petroleum Exploration Society (EPEX), joined us to conduct a very successful Geosciences Technology Workshop (GTW) in Alexandria during March 2016. This was the first GTW held in Africa since 2009.

And the big news to emerge regarded Africa Region's first all-Africa conference that was set for December in Nairobi — the inaugural Africa Energy and Technology Conference (AETC) — with Dave Blanchard chairing the Executive Committee and co-sponsors being the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The program: Three days of technical sessions with about 50 oral presentations, plenary sessions comprising high-level industry, governmental, and NGO representatives, several industry short-courses and a field trip to the Kenya rift valley.

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With strong IBA, YP, DL and VG programs, and renewed vigor in our Africa-focused technical meetings, we have a great deal of momentum to help carry us forward over the coming year.

We also have a superb leadership team: Adegbendga "Femi" Esan (president-elect); Scott Durocher (vice president); Mimonitu Opuwari (secretary); and Ajibola Oyebamigi (treasurer). They will be supported by newly elected House of Delegates representatives Adeola Adesida, Lydia Olaka, Fida Medina, Gilbert Odior (another past-Africa Region president) and Kaushalendra Trivedi — and of course Dave, Nosa and myself. Nosa also will be representing us at higher organizational levels as a member of the AAPG Advisory Council for the next three years.

Abeer Zubaidi (in Dubai) and Delia Kuye (in Lagos) will continue to help manage the Africa Region business and provide professional guidance in all of our activities.

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All this very positive news must be tempered by one cause for serious concern: The AAPG Africa Region membership numbers, like across the world, are in decline. This is probably the case for most petroleum industry societies, and of course is most directly related to the collapse in oil and gas prices and our industry downturn.

Regardless of the causes and underlying factors, we must work hard to reverse this loss of members. Reduced membership means a smaller role in the overall AAPG organization (fewer votes, less representation on key committees, etc.), but more importantly it negatively impacts the vitality of our personal and professional networks here in Africa. We cannot expect to have the most productive and innovative GTWs, all-Region conferences, DL series and IBA competitions without a large, active membership.

I finish this note with a sincere request: If you have ideas about how to plan the Africa Region's next GTW, how to improve any of our programs or, perhaps most importantly, how to attract new members or retain old members, please contact me directly or any of the Africa Region leadership team.

I'm sure this will be an exciting year for all of us and we will be proud of what our Region continues to accomplish.

Best regards!

Bill