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A $64 million facility from the African Export Import Financial institution helps Nigerian entrepreneur Nzan Ogbe push his vitality firm past commodity buying and selling and into gasoline infrastructure, a nook of the sector traders more and more view as steadier and extra predictable.
Afreximbank mentioned Friday that it offered an acquisition finance facility to Levene Vitality Improvement Ltd. The financial institution mentioned the cash helps Levene’s fairness dedication to Bluecore Gasoline Infraco Ltd, a automobile pursuing an acquisition linked to a 30% fairness stake in Axxela Ltd, which Afreximbank described as one among West Africa’s main gasoline and energy infrastructure corporations.
The transfer offers Levene what the financial institution known as direct entry into Nigeria’s regulated midstream and downstream gasoline sectors, a shift away from a core enterprise constructed on buying and selling oil and refined petroleum merchandise. Levene’s aim is to develop into a totally built-in vitality firm with recurring income tied to infrastructure property, the assertion mentioned.
Ogbe, Levene’s founder and chief govt, has spent a lot of his working life in companies the place relationships and timing matter as a lot as stability sheets. On the corporate’s web site, he’s described as a serial entrepreneur with greater than 30 years of expertise throughout industrial buying and selling, actual property, telecommunications and oil and gasoline. He holds a bachelor’s diploma in Communication Arts and has attended management and administration packages, in response to Levene.
His route into vitality got here later than a few of Nigeria’s higher identified oil merchants. In a 2023 interview with BusinessDay, Ogbe mentioned he based Levene Vitality in 2016 after years in different ventures, then constructed the corporate round buying and selling crude oil out of Nigeria and importing refined merchandise and derivatives into the nation.
Levene now markets itself as an African born world vitality firm working throughout buying and selling, upstream companies, engineering and clear vitality growth. Afreximbank mentioned its relationship with Levene dates to 2019, starting with commerce finance amenities that later expanded as the corporate grew.
Ogbe has additionally leaned into the renewable pitch at a time when many banks have tightened financing for brand spanking new oil and gasoline initiatives. In December 2025, Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported that Ogbe acquired a sustainability award tied to Levene’s work on a totally automated photo voltaic panel manufacturing facility, which the report mentioned concerned funding of greater than $20 million. The identical report mentioned the corporate had begun exporting photo voltaic panels to Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa.
Afreximbank framed the Axxela linked transaction as a part of a broader vitality transition push, arguing that increasing gasoline infrastructure can enhance vitality entry whereas displacing dirtier fuels. In its assertion, the financial institution mentioned backing Levene’s transfer into gasoline helps cleaner vitality sources and regional vitality safety.
As Nigeria’s gasoline worth chain opens up, offers like this will additionally reshape who owns and controls vital infrastructure. Ogbe has positioned Levene as a neighborhood participant aiming to maneuver from buying and selling margins to lengthy lived property, betting that pipelines, distribution networks and gasoline to energy initiatives will outlast the subsequent cycle in oil costs.
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