TOTALEnergies has appointed an experienced female African specialist within its management ranks as its Country Chair in Namibia.
Mariam Kane-Garcia succeeds Laurent Roché, the French drilling engineer who oversaw the company’s aggressive campaign in the country from July 2022 to November 2025.
She returns to Africa from Paris where she was, for the last one year, Senior Vice President HSSE TOTALEnergies MS.
Her prior assignment before the last job was a five year role as MD & CEO TOTAL South Africa and Executive VP Southern Africa TOTAL M&S, for which she was domiciled in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Kane-Garcia comes to the Namibian position with a different, but highly valued set of skills than core geoscience or engineering, as she takes the helm at TOTAL’s likely next largest exploration and production heartland on the continent.
The next nine months will be crucial for negotiating the final investment decision (FID) on the Venus oil field development, proposed as a concept of up to 40 subsea wells tied back to a single FPSO with a nameplate capacity of approximately 160,000 barrels per day of oil, with reinjection of associated gas offshore.
In speeches, actions and appointments, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who took power in March 2025, has signalled to the oil industry she was centralising control around her office, with few trusted advisers.
Mariam Kane-Garcia’s appointment may then be a way of the French major telegraphing the message that it is willing to engage with the Namibian government as carefully as it can.
After a few roles doing finance, budgeting and marketing, Kane-Garcia’s career took off with her appointment as Vice-President Strategy – Africa and the Middle East in 2012.
In 2016, she left Paris to live in Aberdeen, Scotland as Strategy Business Development Director TOTAL E&P UK (TEP UK).
After those two back to back strategy jobs at very high levels, she moved to Johannesburg, South Africa.
