The effort to ensure that Africa’s new, 21st-century oil producers avoid the resource curse has involved the promotion of a remarkably similar set of institutional reforms, often termed the Norwegian Model. This model involves separating out the policy, commercial and regulatory functions of oil governance, and is based on the successful experience of Norway. This paper tracks the adoption and implementation of these oil governance reforms in five of Africa’s new producers – Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda – and asks how this process has shaped the capabilities of each country to govern oil effectively. It particularly focuses on how relations between international actors and ideas and domestic political settlements shape how bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness (PoEs) emerge and/or are maintained as key nodes of oil governance capability. As such our analysis will be of interest to those within the international development community interested in natural resource governance, good governance, the political economy of aid, the role of institutions in delivering development, as well as observers of the five countries covered in the study.