The African Development Fund(AfDB) has approved a technical assistance grant of $2 million for the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS) to boost electricity reforms.
The grant which comes through the concessional window of the financial institution will go to the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority, AfDB said.
The ultimate objective is to stimulate cross-border electricity trade and improve energy access in the 15 countries in the region, it noted in a statement.
According to AfDB, the project, which has five components, will involves selecting electricity regulatory principles and key performance indicators from its flagship Electricity Regulatory Index for Africa report.
This will be adopted by the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority to build capacity in member countries for collecting and reporting on these indicators on a common platform, it stated.
The project will involve conducting a study in order to update a comparative analysis of electricity tariffs and their underlying drivers across the electricity value chain of ECOWAS as well as developing a centralised database management system that will provide a platform for digitally collecting relevant energy information from member countries, storing, and disseminating them on a common digital platform.
It will assess and identify project bottlenecks and risks in ECOWAS member countries and recommend a coherent approach to progressively address ground-level barriers to investment in the power sector in pre- and post-establishment phases of the regional electricity market while also focusing on program management and capacity building, which will be co-financed with the Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority.
The AfDB also said all components of the project would include gender-disaggregated data.
Solomon Sarpong, project team leader at the AfDB was quoted as saying, “Ultimately, this project will facilitate regional electricity trade and help improve access to electricity.
“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 organisation that promotes economic integration in 15 West Africa countries.
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