The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) launched a new project last Thursday to boost efforts at formalising the sale and purchase of electricity among West African nations.
The “Regional Harmonization of Regulatory Frameworks and Tools for Improved Electricity Regulation in ECOWAS” project seeks to provide the necessary conditions to harmonize the regulation of electricity supply among member states of ECOWAS as a critical condition for the take-off of the subregional power market.
The project also seeks to facilitate the efficient and timely completion and use of energy infrastructure for the subregion.
Callixte Kambanda, Manager for Energy Policy, Regulation, and Statistics at AfDB, said during the launching that the project would be financed by a 2.0-million-dollar technical assistance from AfDB to the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulation Authority (ERERA) to facilitate the process of harmonization.
He said similar support to the other subregional blocs in Africa would enable them to build their power markets and culminate in the African Single Electricity Market (AfSEM) initiative of the African Union Commission to integrate various regional markets into a continental power market and further boost electricity exchange.
“An integrated power market will help shape Africa’s energy transition pathway. This is because it will allow the sustainable and cost-effective exploitation of the diverse energy resources of the continent, especially renewable energy, in more endowed countries and shared with less endowed countries,” Kambanda stated.
In addition to the critical power interconnectors and other power infrastructure to boost cross-border power flow in Africa, Kambanda urged the continent’s leaders to recognize the importance of the soft infrastructure aspect, including policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks.
Launching the project, Kocou Laurent Rodrigue Tossou, Chairman of ERERA, said the subregional body was taking pains to develop the electricity market due to the importance of energy to economic growth and development.
“Our vision is to have a West Africa where electricity is not merely a commodity but a catalyst for sustainable development, economic growth, and improved livelihoods for residents of the ECOWAS area,” Tossou added.
ECOWAS has been seeking to formalize the exchange/ trade in electricity in the subregion to make pricing and infrastructure predictable, underpinned by firm regulations.