Africa Energy Series: Equatorial Guinea speaks to Pablo Memba Etuba, Director General of business development and management consulting firm, Grupo Memba, about the company’s activities in Equatorial Guinea.
Grupo Memba (GML) is a business development and management consulting firm that connects international investors with the resources and services needed to enter and engage in multiple markets in Equatorial Guinea and across the continent.
Specifically, GML creates and implements business development plans, conducts market evaluations, provides technical analysis for cost reduction planning and optimizes client performance. The firm also assists with human resource planning and recruitment, and develops strategies to maximize client growth. Specializing in the energy and infrastructure sectors, GML’s clients include General Electric, Ferrostaal, Lamnalco, Trafigura, Gas Natural, BHP Engineering and Construction, Equipment and Controls, Vopak, Heerema Fabrication, Luba Freeport, and FCC.
The firm finds its origins in Founder and Director General, Pablo Memba Etuba, who acquired overseas experience developing and executing business projects in the U.S. for over a decade for firms such as Southern Electric International. He later started his own consultancy practice in the U.S in 1996, which he later expanded, founding GML when he returned to Equatorial Guinea in 2010 to do business full-time in Malabo. With a multidisciplinary team and over thirty years of cumulative experience working around the globe, GML views multicultural expertise as one of its key competitive advantages. It allows the firm to gain insight into the often nuanced cultural differences between countries and their respective business climates to facilitate successful interactions between and among local, regional, and international companies.
“We have a keen understanding of how business works on both sides of the Atlantic. Having led projects in all four regions, we know first-hand how people think in the US, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa. For us, it is easy to engage and advise a company that has not been in Equatorial Guinea before. There is a cultural understanding that is required to successfully do business in different countries,” he says.
This year, GML is expanding its capabilities to include technical services. It aims to separate its core offerings into management consulting, where the firm will continue to advise companies on strategy and approach to doing business in-country, and technical service, where GML will provide technical expertise to national and international oil and gas companies.
Utilizing its experience in identifying opportunities and developing partnerships, GML plans to partner with an existing service provider to gain technical expertise in this area, and is currently in negotiations with several companies to establish such a partnership. The firm intends to become a major local service provider for companies operating in upstream, midstream, and downstream in Equatorial Guinea.
