By Abdallah el-Kurebe
An African energy workshop held in Abidjan, headquarters of Cote d’Voire rose with the resolution that clean energy-powered mini-grids (CMEGs) is an essential tool for achieving universal access.
A statement issued at the end of the workshop also noted that a high percentage of the West African population live in remote rural areas, adding that “an ambitious target of building 128,000 in West Africa by 2030 has been set.”
Organised by the Smart Villages Initiative, the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE), and the European Union Energy Initiative Partnership Dialogue Facility (EUEIPDF), the workshop served to kick start a wider capacity-building engagement on CEMGs in the ECOWAS region, “including an upcoming regional workshop as well as the provision of high-quality technical assistance for the improvement of the enabling environment.”
Smart Villages, which had staged workshops across the globe, shared conclusions and recommendations from its West African engagements held over the last 12 months with emphasis on SDG7 and energy-related access issues, such as the water-food-energy nexus.
“The workshop was highly productive and we would like to thank our partners ECREEE and EUEI PDF. There is a growing amount of cooperation across ECOWAS already on Distributed Renewable Energy issues. However, such is the scale of the challenge and the ambitious targets set that we concluded several issues must be urgently addressed. Chief amongst these is finance and how to create public-private partnerships with a clear model and rate of return for potential investors. We would also like to highlight the need for equipment and operating standards as well as appropriate tariffs as key to creating a sustainable operating environment. However, this is not to advocate a “one-size fits all” top-down approach, since our work in ECOWAS has reinforced one of the main overall findings of the Smart Villages Initiative – namely that local conditions vary enormously and must be taken into account. The lessons from this workshop will now be incorporated into our final reports and policy briefs to be released in the near future,” Dr. John Holmes, Co-Leader of the Smart Villages Initiative, said.“
ECREEE’s Executive Director, Mr. Mahama Kappiah said that the workshop was a wonderful example of fruitful and constructive partnership among different stakeholders to support the tremendous efforts going on in each ECOWAS Member State.
“With budgetary constraints limiting efforts to extend on-grid service to some parts of the region, clean energy mini-grids are an excellent solution and they represent the least-cost option for thousands of villages in rural areas. Nevertheless, enabling the environment for investment is essential to achieve the ambitious targets on access, and ECREEE and its partners are ready to continue to support the countries in their efforts to improve it,” he said pointing out that, “As the issue of tariff regulation is always at the centre of the debate, we are happy to have hosted on the last day of the conference the first regional stakeholder workshop on the Renewable Energy Tariff Toolbox that we are jointly developing together with EUEI PDF.
Kappiah believed that the instrument could be useful for the countries to accelerate their ongoing efforts to promote renewable energy.”
