DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECOWAS ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM

The non-availability of reliable and updated energy information is a major barrier for local and international investors, policy makers, and other project developers in the energy sector in the ECOWAS Region. Information about the energy resources and their potentials are not readily available in all member states, which greatly impacts decision making, policies formulation, monitoring and evaluation of targets. Given this situation, significant opportunities are lost for sustainable energy development in the region.

The region is further characterized by institutional weaknesses, lack of coordination in energy data collection and information sharing amongst stakeholders and lack of skilled personnel in data management.

In an attempt to mitigate these challenges and improve energy data collection and management at national and regional level, ECREEE, WAPP and ERERA have made giant strides to support the member states. Despite these efforts, some major barriers still exist. Primarily common to the three institutions, is the unavailability of an efficient and reliable platform for data and information management, which covers the needs of all three institutions.

In this context, ECREEE and its partners intend to recruit a firm or team of consultants to do a pre-feasibility study for the design and development of an integrated Energy Information System aimed at addressing the poor data collection and information dissemination in the energy sector.