Energy experts from ECOWAS Member States strengthen their capacity in Energy Information System (EIS) during a workshop held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 14 to 17 November 2023.

It should be recalled that the ECOWAS Energy Information System which was officially launched in March 2023 in Bissau, Guinea Bissau during the 14th meeting of ECOWAS Ministers in charge of Energy, is one of the major achievements of the Programme entitled “Improving governance of the energy sector in West Africa (AGoSE-AO, acronym in French)”. This programme, is implemented by the ECOWAS Commission, with the financial support of the European Union within the framework of the 11th European Development Fund. Its overall objective is to “contribute to poverty reduction through increased regional integration in the energy sector in West Africa”.

During his statement at the opening of the workshop, Mr Bayaornibè Dabire, ECOWAS Director of Energy and Mines highlighted the importance of the EIS system to provides ECOWAS and Member States with credible, consistent, reliable and regularly updated data and information on the energy situation of the region and the states.  These data are essential for better planning, design and monitoring of energy sector strategies and policies. He urged participants to actively participate during the sessions, to provide the ECOWAS Commission with the most recent national data, and to formulate appropriate proposals to consolidate this tool and ensure its sustainability.

Mr Dosso Moussa, Director of Renewable Energy and Bioenergy, during his opening statement on behalf of the Minister in charge of Mines, Petroleum and Energy, indicated that the ECOWAS-EIS is not only a tool for collecting, analyzing and disseminating reliable data and information on the region’s energy situation, but it is also important system for promoting a just energy transition in West Africa. He expressed the hope that all countries would soon have computerized energy information systems, enabling them to dematerialize data collection, improve data quality, harmonize methodologies for compiling energy indicators, and store and disseminate information more rapidly.

The first annual workshop on the ECOWAS EIS, held in Accra in March 2022, provided an opportunity to take stock of the progress made in the implementation of the system. It had also trained national experts on the data collection tool and in the use of the online platform.

This second workshop has been an opportunity to continue the discussions and to build on the achievements of the first workshop. The workshop made it possible to firsly review the current results of the ECOWAS-EIS and validate the data and to secondly train national experts in energy planning and on the various tools developed by the ECOWAS EIS for improving data collection and dissemination at national level.

At the end of the workshop, participants recommended to ECOWAS to (i) Take appropriate actions to ensure the sustainability of the ECOWAS EIS and its internalization into a Commission program, (ii) Pursue synergy between the ECOWAS EIS and other ECOWAS energy agency systems, (iii) Support member states in organizing energy consumption surveys (biomass, clean cooking, non-formal imports of petroleum products, etc.), (iv) Strengthen member states’ capacity to use a) the computerized data collection tool, b) the Geographic Information System, c) energy statistics quality control tools.

Member states were particularly tasked to (i) take the necessary steps to submit data for year n by August of year n+1 at the latest and (ii) Institutionalize the national EIS and strengthen national teams.