ECOWAS Launches ROGEAP In The Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has launched its Regional Off-Grid Electricity Access Project (ROGEAP) in Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire. The launch ceremonies of the workshops were attended by the stakeholders in the renewable energy sector of the two West African countries.

The events took place in Banjul, the capital of Gambia, and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire on consecutive days last week. The attendees were officials from the Ministries in charge of Energy, public and private sector stakeholders, civil society organizations, NGOs, and commercial banks in the Gambia as well as Cote d’Ivoire.

The main objective of both events was to present ROGEAP’s new structure to the stakeholders and to sensitize them regarding the policy framework implementation for developing solar technologies as well as the market of off-grid PV systems market in the two countries.

Alhagie Manjang, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, formally declared the opening of the workshop in Banjul to launch ROGEAP activities in the Gambia. Elhadji Sylla, ROGEAP Senior Advisor, representing the ECOWAS Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy and Digitalisation attended the event

In Abidjan, the workshop launch was presided over by Pacôme N’guessan N’Cho, Director of Rural Electrification, who represented the Minister of Mines, Petroleum, and Energy for Cote d’Ivoire. The event in Abidjan was attended by Sandra Folquet, ECOWAS National Office Head in Cote d’Ivoire, and Arnaud Ba Kouadio, ROGEAP’s Monitoring-Evaluation Expert, who represented the ECOWAS Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy, and Digitalisation.

The primary goal of ROGEAP is to increase access to electricity via solar energy in the fifteen ECOWAS countries and in four other African countries including Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, and Mauritania. The total cost of the project is nearly 338.7 million and is funded by the World Bank, Clean Technology Fund (CTF), and Netherland’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS).