Ministerial Validation of the Central Africa Renewable Energy Roadmap

Upon the request from the General Secretariat of Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), IRENA has been supporting the region in drawing up a Regional Renewable Roadmap to define the actions to be carried out to promote renewable energy. ECCAS is a group of 11 Member States: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe. The region covers an area of 6,600,600 square kilometres and has a population of about 170.5 million inhabitants.

The Community is characterized by an ecosystem that is primordial for the planet and acts as its "second lung." In fact, the Congo Basin is the world's second largest forest and water resource and contains abundant primary energy resources; which, however, remains poorly exploited due to the lack of appropriate policy and program strategies at member country and regional level. It is important to set a Protocol on Energy Cooperation which "establishes a legal framework for the promotion of long-term cooperation in the energy sector based on complementarities and mutual benefits, with the aim of increasing investment in the energy sector and intensifying energy trade in Central Africa".

A Ministerial Validation of the Central Africa Renewable Energy Roadmap is being organised to submit the Roadmap to the validation of the ECCAS Region Ministers in charge of Renewable Energy. The overall objective of the workshop is to obtain a consensus of the Ministers in charge of Renewable Energies of each ECCAS Member States on the Renewable Energy Roadmap for Central Africa.