BLACK GOLD: Ghanaian President John Atta Mills opens the Jubilee oil taps

Africa's Gold Coast, otherwise known as the Republic of Ghana, marked the first 100 days since its oil taps began running, on March 25, 2011. The oil in question flows from the country's offshore Jubilee oilfield, recognized by the stakeholders to be the largest oil discovery in West Africa in the last 10 to 15 years.

This discovery has injected an air of optimism amongst Ghanaians and all who have spoken to international journalists thronging the country are of the view that Ghana will prosper because of the commercial production of oil that was sensationally unveiled last December in a widely broadcast event by Ghana's President John Atta Mills.

Boom time

The numbers are impressive, given that in the Jubilee oilfield there's a staggering 1 billion barrels of oil and 800 billion cubic feet of natural gas, all waiting to be sold over the next quarter century. Production at Jubilee is forecast on the Ministry of Energy's website to quickly rise to 120,000 barrels per day by May and eventually reach 250,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.

Two more offshore oilfields, Enyenra and Tweneboa, have been identified and could produce between 75,000 and 125,000 barrels per day when the taps begin running in 2014.

This year alone, if the estimates attributed to government officials is anything to go by, Ghana will rake in $500 million in revenues from oil sales.

That is a lot of money and the people in the dusty, run-down port city of Takoradi, just 60 km from the Jubilee oilfield in Ghana's west coast are thinking big.

The farmers know that the hundreds of workers trooping into the town to work in the oil sector will need food and transport to and from work. They will have to pay for that. Somehow, the oil money will find its way into the pockets of many of the ordinary Ghanaians providing these services, including the market women selling groceries.

Entrepreneurs too are heading into the town to put up mansions for sale and others to provide services.