The aim of the paper is to identify which factors influence the production of crude oil in Africa and what it means for the investments in oil production on this continent in the future. In order to identify these factors it is necessary to create a function of production. A number of variables have been chosen, which are likely to have an influence on the level of exploitation, such as the price of oil, oil consumption in Africa, oil import by the US, etc. The estimation of the function was based on the statistical analysis of empirical data. For the years 1980–2015 the linear regression model was estimated using the method of ordinary least squares (OLS) and econometric software – GRETL. In order to find the best model the academic research on the global oil market has been taken into account and a variety of statistical and econometric tests have been made. According to the literature on the subject, the production of crude oil in Africa is mostly affected by two players – Europe and the US. The first includes the member states of the OPEC. There are also countries of West Africa which in the past exported most of their production to the US. The model shows that the situation has changed after the “shale revolution”, which reduced the level of imported oil and consequently the level of African production. Moreover, an interesting trend has been noticed, namely that when oil prices go up, the oil production in Africa decreases. The reason for this phenomenon is that high oil prices make American shale plays more profitable than West African petroleum basins. The model aggregating macroeconomic indicators and statistics is a very useful management tool and it reveals the problems of the efficiency of investments in oil production in Africa.