Addis Ababa — The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) will in 2019 continue to support member States in their quest to develop their energy sectors.

This was said by the ECA's Director for the African Centre for Statistics, Mr. Oliver Chinganya, in a speech to participants attending a two-day workshop on Africa Energy Data Collection, Validation, and Processing that was organized by the ECA, African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Energy Commission (AFREC), Association of Power Utilities of Africa (APUA) and the World Bank.

"In ECA there are some substantive divisions and sub-regional offices that support member States on energy development. These divisions require energy data and statistics to effectively undertake their activities. There is therefore a need to strengthen the collaboration among stakeholders in a coherent and coordinated way in order to effectively assist countries in the production and dissemination of energy data and statistics," he said.

Mr. Chinganya said to avoid duplication of efforts on the continent there was 'need to consider preparing and sharing strategies and implementation plans, undertaking joint missions, and sharing data'.

He said ECA's Executive Secretary, Vera Songwe, wants the ACS to focus on energy as one of its three main activities in 2019.

"The Centre will therefore be highly involved in the development of energy statistics in Africa in collaboration with other partners including yourselves," said Mr. Chinganya.

The primary aim of the workshop is to explore areas of collaboration, synergy and complementarity in the activities between institutions working in the African energy data space and ultimately come up with a harmonized framework for the collection, processing and dissemination of energy data in Africa.

Specifically, the workshop will seek to;

highlight the various methodologies employed by the participating institutions in data gathering and processing to identify the commonality and divergence in the methodologies;

build synergy among the participating institutions in respect of energy data related activities;

assess a possibility of developing a matrix of core indicators of energy statistics and with guidelines to provide harmonized and agreed definitions to the core energy indicators;

explore cooperation and synergy between the participating institutions regarding data collection, processing, and validation, taking cognisance of the relative experience and expertise of the institutions in specific segments of energy data gathering in Africa.

develop an action plan, including on engaging with the various African countries and stakeholders in order to obtain their buy-in to the agreed collaboration and harmonization activities.

At the end of the workshop, organizers hope there would be synergy and complementary among African energy players in relations to:

methodology on data collection;

data processing;

data validation;

definition of core indicators of energy;

source of energy data collection and

frequency of data gathering and update.

Also expected at the end of the workshop is complementarity of efforts among participating institutions in areas of energy data, without duplication efforts and discrepancies in data gathering and processing.

An action plan for the implementation of agreed collaboration and harmonization activities will be put in place with focal points from participating institutions being selected for specific segments of data gathering and processing.