Energy Analyst with IMANI Dennis Asaare says challenges in the energy sector must be addressed before governments can think of accelerating local content in the sector.

He said following the impact of Covid-19 on the economy, most promises in the 2020 manifestos of political parties [with regards to accelerating local content] are not feasible.

"As a country, we see that there is a lot of disconnect between our local content policies and the whole industrialisation drive of the country.

"For you to accelerate local content, you need to have an industrilisation policy that set up the infrastructure, provide the framework to allow that; if oil and gas companies are in the country and they need fabrications and materials, that capacity or resource is already in existence, else they will source from outside" he said.

This comes after some political parties in their 2020 manifesto have promised to leverage on local content to ensure development in the energy sector.

The NPP says it will "enforce a local content policy in the upstream and the downstream", while the NDC also wants to "aggressively promote it and also review local content policies."

But speaking on the Super Morning Show Tuesday, Mr Asare stated that the local content policies are going to face a lot of challenges if the fundamentals are not addressed.

He noted that, as countries are recovering from Covid-19, they are leveraging on the local content to develop various sectors, however, the country is lacking in terms of financial capacity, technology, as well as human resource.

"What we have seen in Ghana is that the areas that are high employing areas and are high value areas, those are the areas that we lack capacity,

"Most companies are also applying automation and artificial intelligence so they are cutting down on the number of people they can employ even on one platform.

"So the question is not about how aggressive you want to do but until you resolve some of these fundamental challenges, you will set up a policy, the oil and gas companies may be seeking the services internally but your internal capacity is not well structured to provide that services," he said.