Mr. Abdellatif BARDACH, President of the National Electricity Regulatory Authority, participated on 13 and 14 February 2019, in Abidjan at the AfDB headquarters in the workshop "Electricity Regulatory Index (ERI) for Africa". The workshop was attended by national and regional regulatory institutions, operators’ groupings, utilities and consumer associations in order to obtain stakeholders' perceptions on the development of the ERI 2019 after that of 2018.
Regarding the ERI, the African Development Bank (AfDB) launched in 2016 the New Deal on Energy for Africa, a partnership-based initiative that aims at achieving universal access to electricity in Africa by 2025.
One of the major priorities of this deal is to help African countries strengthen their energy policies as well as the sector regulation and governance. As part of the related efforts to identify regulatory issues in the power sector, the AfDB through the Energy, Climate Change and Green Growth Complex has committed to launch on an annual basis the Electricity Regulatory Index (ERI), a country-by-country comparative assessment of the level of regulatory development of the power sector.
The Index will be a long-term benchmarking tool that will track progress as African countries harmonize their regulatory frameworks governing the electricity sector in line with international standards and best practices.
In his speech, Hippolyte Ebagnitchie, Director General of ANARE-CI, on behalf of his African regulatory peers, pledged to contribute effectively to the proceedings after expressing the gratitude of the Ivorian authorities for holding this second workshop in Côte d’Ivoire. Then, Professor Honoré Bogler, President of ARREC (ECOWAS Regional Energy Regulatory Authority), took the floor and welcomed the AfDB’s commitment to support regulators to adopt best practices in the regulation and governance of the electricity sector and invited governments to “grant regulators the right to set electricity tariffs from now on”.
