The African Energy Commission (AFREC), in collaboration with the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), organized the 3rd regional training workshop for the Southern Africa countries on "Energy Statistics, Residential Sector Energy Efficiency Data Collection and Initial Step towards the Creation of Energy Efficiency Database for Industrial Sector ". The workshop brought together 44 participants from 13 African countries as well as international organizations, including the representatives of the IEA, AEEP and a representative from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, South Africa.
The workshop was declared open by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources representative, Ms. Violet Olifant. This was followed by speeches from AFREC, AEEP and the IEA. Mr. Abdoulaye Oueddo, an Senior policy officer in energy information systems and representative of the executive director of AFREC, Mr Rashid Ali Abdallah, thanked the South African government for hosting the third AFREC workshop for South African countries. He proceeded to thank the partners including the AEEP, IEA, and representatives of the Southern Africa region, South African Power Pool (SAPP) and SADC Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (SACREEE). He expressed a sincere gratitude to Mr. Crispen Zana representing GIZ and his staff. During his presentation he outlined the new programmes of AFREC that have been spread into 5 pillars. These 5 pillars include: The African Energy Information System Improvement (AEIS) Programme, Bioenergy Programme, The Energy Efficiency Programme, The Energy Transition Programme and Oil and Gas Programme. The completed by enlighting the particpants to apply for the trainer of the trainers program.
Mr. Crispen, representative of AEEP, thanked AFREC for the partnership and was pleased to see that Africans are taking charge of their development within the continent. He expressed the need for Africa to realize the importance of its resources. For example, we have plenty of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy. It is also necessary for Africa to access reliable statistics from institutions such as AFREC for the handling issues such as policy making on the continent. "If Africa wants to achieve the SGDs goals, the Agenda2063 it’s important to do all the process right now. Put energy statistics in your language then we can be a winner" Mr. Crispen.
Mr. Francesco Mattion, an expert from IEA thanked all the participants present and gave a special thank you to AFREC and the GIZ delegates. He gave greetings from the IEA chief of statistics officer and IEA executive director. IEA has tried to comply with Africa's development policies and consequently signed an MoU with the African Union Commission (AUC). IEA is showing its commitment by supporting Africa in various areas. IEA will continue to improve the situation of energy statistics, energy efficiency and energy transition. He concluded with the following words, ''Energy Efficiency will be a source programme for the development of Africa. There would be no good policy without a good energy program.''
