Africa’s Energy Statisticians Improve Skills and Knowledge at Training Workshops
10 December 2021, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire – The African Energy Commission (AFREC), with support from the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP), successfully conducted workshop trainings for a second batch of energy statistician durin November and December 2021. The cohort consisting of 32 energy experts from 25 African Union Member States will go on to lead trainings for other African energy experts at national and regional level, as well as provide coaching and mentoring to AFREC’s National Focal Points (NFP’s).
Participants especially appreciated the skills and knowledge the workshops provided them with. For Ms Aya Amalaman-Doh, Energy Engineer, Ministry of Mines, Petroleum and Energy Côte d’Ivoire, it was the first time in a continental meeting with other energy experts and peers. She summarises that “the training provides me with skills to teach about energy statistics. I increased my knowledge on energy data and it was very insightful to exchange experiences with colleagues from other countries.”
Mr Tsholofelo Thuso Tshekiso, Energy Engineer, Department of Energy Botswana, concluded that the “training was truly a great experience. I wanted to learn and improve my skills on data quality. Now I have an idea how to better analyze the data by identifying unusual changes.”
Statistics as the basis of all policy formulation
Speaking on behalf of AFREC’s Executive Director, Mr Abdoulaye Oueddo, Senior Policy Officer for Energy Information System at AFREC, said that the training is in line with the call from member states to ensure statistics forms the basis of all policy formulation, monitoring and evaluation for Africa’s energy sector development.
‘‘The capacity building programme supports National Focal Points (NFPs) in our member states to strengthen national information system and the revamped African Energy Information System (AEIS), by coordinating energy data collection and validation at national level’’, he emphasised. He encouraged Member states to appoint more NFPs to ensure adequate knowledge on new AEIS tools and questionnaires is provided.
Mr Francois Kokola, representing the Ministry of Mines, Petroleum and Energy, Côte d’Ivoire congratulated AFREC for supporting the capacity building of African Energy Statisticians and appreciated the support provided by the AEEP.
Mr Maximilian Heil, Communication Advisor at the AEEP Secretariat of the thanked AFREC for the long collaboration and the government of Côte d’Ivoire for hosting the training. “The training of trainers for national focal points in collaboration with AFREC is a great example of how the two institutions are striving to improve the quality of energy data in the AU MS, constituting a basis for informed policy decisions. Recently, we published a report on financial flows on SDG7 to Africa, highlighting that the cost of inaction is far greater than achieving sustainable energy access for all. Arriving at that conclusion would have been impossible without good validated data sources”, he stated.
The training of trainers is AFREC’s capacity building programme designed to reduce skills gap in energy statistics and data processing. The programme was created as a result from a lack of qualified African experts in energy statistics and the constant reliance from international experts. As per its mandate, it is AFREC’s ambition that the programme will decrease Africa’s skills deficit in the area of energy statistics, and in turn improve energy data quality and accessibility across continent.
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