The access to clean energy in Africa is limited due to energy poverty, the National Coordinator, Africa Coalition for Sustainable Energy Access (ACSEA) and Executive Director, Environmental Right Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FoEN), Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, has said.
Ojo stated this yesterday in Abuja at the ACSEA Nigeria platform project launch and workshop on renewable energy initiatives.
He said the workshop, with the theme, ‘Ensuring a People-Centred Energy Transition in Africa through Robust Civil Society’, is to address issues of energy governance to allow for decentralized energy systems that promote community energy in off-grid, mini-grid and standalone systems.
“There is low participation in the decision-making process on renewable energy initiatives. Therefore, the prime focus of the project is the promotion of renewable energy access in Nigeria. In general, clean energy access is limited due to energy poverty.
“We strongly believe that only through decentralized energy systems that energy poverty can best be tackled and solved. This cannot happen unless driven by people and CSOs different from business initiatives which exist solely for returns on investment and profits,” Ojo stated.
The Continental Coordinator of ACSEA, Dr Augustine Njamnshi, said the problem of access to clean energy in Africa is not only because of lack of energy itself.
“It is the governance around it. It is so opaque that if we don’t get the governance right, even if we have energy from renewable sources, at the end of the day, we would not have solved the access problem,” Njamnshi said.
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