Can Africa Fill Europe’s Energy Diversification Gap?

Iran’s strikes on Qatar's Ras Laffan complex and the subsequent tightening of the Strait of Hormuz have shattered the comfortable assumption that liquefied natural gas (LNG) was a structurally safer alternative to pipeline dependency. The conflict throttled 20% of global LNG exports in a matter of weeks. For the European Union (EU), the crisis exposes a strategic miscalculation in the way it replaces Russian imports. 

The EU is phasing out its pipeline from Moscow, but new dependencies on other providers are developing. By late 2025, the United States accounted for 61% of EEA LNG imports. Washington has already acted on this leverage, explicitly linking gas supplies to demands for modifications of EU regulations. The current volatility in gas prices following the Hormuz blockage raises alarms but stems from the same issue: the EU's heavy reliance on US and Gulf seaborne LNG. Strategic autonomy requires geographically distinct supply partnerships rather than deeper integration into a single dominant market. Africa’s reserves, proximity, and developing infrastructure corridors offer the EU much-needed supply depth. 

North Africa’s Double Edge 

Africa already supplies around 20% of Europe’s gas needs through Algerian and Libyan pipelines in the north, Nigerian and Mauritanian LNG in the west, and Mozambican LNG in the east. That share is growing as new LNG corridors are emerging in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, and Angola, while Nigeria, currently the source of 5% of EU LNG imports in the first half of 2025, holds the reserves to become a significantly larger supplier. 

The EU's most immediate African energy anchors are in the north, where existing pipeline infrastructure already delivers at scale. Algeria supplied roughly 12% of Europe’s total gas imports through its Medgaz route to Spain and its TransMed pipeline to Italy. Libya contributes additional volumes through the Greenstream pipeline. Beyond gas, Algeria is the region's second-largest crude oil producer, with Italy as its primary customer, and a 1,400 MW electricity interconnection between Morocco and Spain provides the continent's only functional North Africa-EU power link. Yet the crisis that is driving Europe toward North African pipelines is also a preview of what concentrated reliance on those same pipelines could one day look like. 

Algeria's position as a cornerstone supplier does not make it a straightforward partner. Its rivalry with Morocco—a competition for North African leadership frozen around the Western Sahara conflict for nearly six decades—directly shapes its energy diplomacy and constrains the EU's ability to treat the northern corridor as a coherent supply zone. The geopolitical complexity deepens further given Algeria's arms dependency on Moscow; roughly three-quarters of its military procurement originates there. This means that European energy revenue flows into a supply chain that partially sustains Russia's primary regional security partner.

The operational risk crystallized in November 2021, when Algeria let the Maghreb-Europe Gas (MEG) pipeline transit agreement expire. Algiers thus dried up 1,600 kilometers of the corridor transporting natural gas from Algeria to Spain via Morocco to deny the kingdom transit fees. As a result, Spain absorbed the immediate cost through more expensive LNG and reduced export volumes. The message to Brussels was clear: Algeria will pressure Europe for its own regional priorities.

Increasing North African imports is not a risky strategy but an incomplete one. Algeria remains a necessary partner, and the relationship is worth sustaining. But the MEG episode should inform future strategies. As with Russian pipeline gas and the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor anchored to a supplier that is entangled in a regional rivalry does not become more secure through deeper commitment. True diversification means distributing risk across geographies that do not share the same triggers, especially at a time when energy is political leverage. Europe's interest in the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP, also known as African Atlantic Gas Pipeline) points in exactly that direction—not as a replacement for Algerian volume, but as a second track that routes around the North African chokepoints. 

A European Energy Partnership With West Africa is Not a Silver Bullet 

The member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) collectively hold more than 300 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven gas reserves. Most are in Nigeria, which held an estimated 211 tcf of proven gas reserves in 2024. Other notable gas producers in the region include Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal. Given that they are closer to Europe than to the United States or the Gulf states, West African states have a tangible geographic advantage to leverage that translates directly into lower transport costs and shorter supply chains.

Nigeria, which launched its Decade of Gas Initiative in 2021 to reduce its dependence on oil and position natural gas as the key transition fuel, is viewed as central to Europe’s energy diversification plans. Its gas export opportunities include regional projects such as the West African Gas Pipeline, which feeds into the NMGP, as well as the inland Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, which would feed into the Algerian TransMed network. This dual-track diversification logic aims to position Nigeria as both a gas hub and a pivotal actor in Africa’s clean energy transition. In turn, this transition could stimulate regional integration and increase West African states’ bargaining power in global diplomacy.

For energy-producing states in West Africa, the EU’s plan to phase out Russian fossil-fuel imports represents an opportunity to attract long-term investment in their economies. However, the EU’s push for energy partnerships risks locking West African states into a new extractive relationship reminiscent of older patterns that have stifled sustainable development goals across the region. 

Europe’s turn to West Africa for its energy security comes with risk for the suppliers as well. Partnering with Europe might create jobs, finance infrastructure projects, and bring in foreign investment to West African economies, but it also could prioritize export volumes over domestic energy access, as has been the case with oil and other commodities. Nigeria, which holds large reserves of oil and gas, struggles to sustain reliable electricity and petroleum supply. An export-first gas strategy risks deepening this contradiction. It could also further expose West African nations to global price swings and policy shifts, especially as Europe accelerates its energy transition. 

Europe’s timeline adds to the problem. The EU frames gas as a transition fuel, which implies that West Africa is set to be a bridge to Europe’s post-carbon future. This could be attractive for immediate gain, but the long term would be a different story. West Africa risks being locked into long-term fossil infrastructure just as the demand moves on. Europe’s timeline and West Africa’s interests do not align as neatly as the conventional wisdom suggests, and the costs of misalignment will not be equally shared.

New Terms of Engagement 

Taken together, Africa has what Europe needs to diversify its energy supplies. The northern corridor delivers today; the western corridor offers depth for tomorrow. But the architecture connecting European demand to African supply runs through political realities that energy policy alone cannot resolve.

Europe has spent the years since Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine replacing one logic of dependency with another: from Russian pipelines, to US LNG, to African corridors. Each substitution has been presented as diversification. None has addressed the underlying failure: Europe continues to treat energy security as a procurement problem rather than a political one.

African energy is not the next quick fix to Europe’s diversification problem. It is an opportunity that has the potential to reduce cycles of energy crises if the terms of engagement include the political, economic, and social realities as well as the expectations of African states. Any partnership that ignores these factors will generate new dependency constraints on both sides of the equation. 

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.