Empirical Comparison of Output of Petroleum Products of African Oil Producing Countries with OPEC in the 21st Century

African oil producing countries have exploited crude oil which they exported to serve as their major foreign revenue in the last seventy years. These categories of African countries have failed to leverage on this to domestically process their crude oil into outputs of petroleum products to meet with the increase in the local consumption needs their citizens. Paradoxically, it is non-oil producing countries of the continent like South Africa and Egypt that are leading in the processing of crude oil into petroleum products output. Whereas, virtually all the African oil producing countries are major importers of petroleum products from foreign countries that are buyers of their crude oil. It is because of this inability of African countries to take advantage of their membership of OPEC to leverage on the processing of their crude oil into massive outputs of petroleum products to meet up with the continent’s local consumption needs and generate more employment and empower greater numbers of our citizens that forms the motivation for this study. The study adopted qualitative method and data generated through secondary sources such as academic journals, bulletins, textbooks, scholarly papers, and internet materials. Data was analyzed through descriptive and explanatory method. Conclusion can be drawn African oil producing countries underperformed in the area of output of petroleum products compared to OPEC for the period of the study.