Developing capacity for Africa’s energy statistician Training of the Trainers programme

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December 13, 2021

The African Energy Commission (AFREC) with support from the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP) embarked on another training to train a second batch of cohort for energy statistician from the African Union (AU) Member states. The training was held for two weeks from 29 November to the 10^th of December 2021.

The 2^nd cohort which consist of thirty-two (32) energy experts from twenty five (25) countries aims to qualify forty (40 - 20 junior and 20 Advanced) trainers to lead the training of other African energy experts at national and regional level, as well as provide coaching and mentoring to AFREC’s National Focal Points (NFP’s).

This cohort follows the 1^st training cohort which qualified Twenty (20) national energy trainers from the AU member states in Cairo, Egypt in 2019/2020. The twenty trainers were trained to train other National Focal Points (NFPs) and contribute to energy data processing quality, in relation to the improvement of the African Energy Information System (AEIS), and most importantly, enhance cross-border learning and knowledge sharing between African statisticians and energy experts across the continent.

Speaking on behalf of AFREC 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 Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP), he welcomed the participants and wished everyone a successful training and insightful discussions.

Mr. Maximilian Heil, Communication Advisor at the Africa-EU Energy Partnership 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 in 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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