On June 24, the Board of Directors of the African Development Fund approved a technical assistance grant of $2 million to support research that will aid in the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) reforms of the energy Africa
The ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority will receive the money from the African Development Fund, the concessional window of the African Development Bank Group.
The ultimate goal is to increase energy access in the 15 member countries in the region and encourage international trade in power.
There are five parts to the project.
In the first, the ECOWAS Regional Energy Regulatory Authority will choose important performance indicators and principles for electricity regulation from the African Development Bank’s flagship study, the Electricity Regulatory Index for Africa.
The initiative will increase member countries’ capacity to gather and report on these indicators on a shared platform as part of this component.
The second part will entail doing research to update a comparison of electricity rates and their underlying factors throughout the ECOWAS electricity value chain.
The third step entails creating a centralized database management system that will act as a platform for electronically gathering pertinent energy information from member nations, archiving it, and then making it available on a shared digital platform.
The fourth element will evaluate and identify project bottlenecks and risks in ECOWAS member nations and offer a consistent strategy to gradually resolve low-level obstacles to investment in the power sector in the lead-up to and following the formation of the regional electricity market.
The final element, which will be co-financed with the Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority, focuses on program administration and capacity building.
Gender-specific information will be included in every part of the project.
“Ultimately, this project will facilitate regional electricity trade and help improve access to electricity,” said Solomon Sarpong, project team leader at the African Development Bank. “It will address major causes of fragility, such as infrastructure bottlenecks, youth unemployment, environmental challenges, gender inequalities, and regional development imbalances.”
ECOWAS is a regional organization that supports economic integration in the member nations.
It was established on May 28, 1975, through the Treaty of Lagos. Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo are among the 15 nations that make up ECOWAS.
With a total area of 6.1 million km2, ECOWAS is home to around 360 million people.