The work of the Central African Power Pool (CAPP) Experts Committee was launched on February 3 in Brazzaville, against a backdrop of commitment from national electricity companies. A new roadmap should be proposed pending the meeting of the CAPP Steering Committee scheduled for next March in Kigali, Rwanda.
Organized by the permanent secretariat of the PEAC, the meetings of the committee of experts aim to ensure better monitoring of activities, including the mobilization of investments for the realization of interconnections of electricity networks with a view to the creation of a regional electricity market in Central Africa. The PEAC is looking for investors for its forty-one electricity-related projects, including twenty-eight priority integration projects (PIP) and thirteen others from the electrification program (PPET).
Despite its significant energy potential, Central Africa remains the least electrified region on the continent, with untimely power cuts observed in most countries. According to the permanent secretary of PEAC, Atadet Azarak Mogro, the difficulty lies in mobilizing the necessary funding for the construction of electrical works from the States promoting the said projects and from partners. In this regard, ” several field missions have been carried out, notably in Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, the DRC, Equatorial Guinea and Chad, with a view to monitoring the implementation of the selected projects ,” he indicated.
As a specialized institution of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the PEAC intends to play its role in promoting access to electricity for the approximately two hundred million inhabitants of Central Africa. ” The pool must be made less political ,” said the chairman of the PEAC steering committee, Rui Pereira Do Amaral Gourgel, who is also the chairman of the board of directors of the National Electricity Company of Angola. ” As an important vector for accelerating the electrification of our sub-region, the PEAC needs, from now on, to change its paradigm in order to further integrate the community dimension and anticipate the necessary interaction with the four other regional energy pools on the African continent ,” insisted Rui Pereira Do Amaral Gourgel.
Since his arrival in 2024, the chairman of the PEAC steering committee has been advocating a new approach focused on optimizing the different classes of infrastructure, namely PIPs and PPETs, to improve electricity supply in urban and rural areas. National electricity companies, such as Énergie Électrique du Congo (E²C), are key players in the development of the electricity sector. ” Today, a consensus is emerging among ECCAS member countries on the urgency of developing and sharing the immense energy potential ,” suggested Juste Roger Ngando, Deputy Director General of E²C.
At the end of the two days of work, the participants will try to harmonize their views on the portfolio of PIP and PPET projects; the adoption of the implementation report of the action plan and the budget for the year 2024; the action plan and the budget 2025; the conclusions of the audit on the financial statements for the financial year 2024; the membership of the new member of the PEAC, in this case the National Electricity Transmission Company of Cameroon…
