Author: Musa Imam

Major players in the electricity sector in ECOWAS Member States, including regulators, operators, and representatives of the Ministries of Energy and their counterparts from the Finance Ministries, will meet in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, to push forward the agenda of the soon-to-be-launched Regional Electricity Market.

They will be meeting on 16^th November 2016 at the 5^th Electricity Regulatory Forum organized by ERERA in collaboration with the national electricity regulator of Burkina Faso (ARSE) under the theme “Realizing the ECOWAS regional electricity market: Opportunities and Challenges.”

The forum “will afford us an opportunity to focus on the numerous electricity-related issues facing our region. We have huge but unevenly spread potentials, and we have to be smart”, said ERERA’s Chairman, Professor Honoré Bogler.

“Several years ago, our Heads of State determined that the region should pool resources and exploit and distribute them for the benefit of our peoples”, he stated.

Professor Bogler said electricity regulation remains largely unknown to the people and authorities in West Africa. He therefore expressed the hope that the forum would enable regulators to convince policy makers that electricity regulation is the best way to addressing many of the power challenges in Africa.

Part of ERERA’s mandate is to assist ECOWAS Member States without national electricity regulators to set up their own and contribute meaningfully to the development of the region.

The 5^th Forum will be preceded by a two-day meeting of ERERA’s Consultative Committees of Regulators and Operators, also in Ouagadougou.

Participants at this consultative committee meeting will review the Regional Electricity Market Procedures rules, ERERA Rules of Practice and Procedure and will be presented the final draft of the Model Bilateral Contracts for the Regional Electricity Market.