A virtual workshop on economic and technical regulation is underway to build the capacity of participants drawn from national regulatory authorities and ministries of energy of ECOWAS Member States.

Participants, in particular, were drawn from those whose functions include tariffs and rates, technical and engineering and consumer affairs of electricity.

The five-day workshop, which opened on 22nd June 2021 and is being organized in collaboration with the European Union, seeks to outline context-specific strategies for improving economic regulation of electricity sector activities as well as context-specific strategies for improving the quality of service regulation of electricity in West Africa.

More specifically, the workshop objectives include enhancing the financial sustainability of utilities through the development of Cost of Service Studies and improvement of skills on tariff setting; and enhancing the quality of service delivery of utilities by delivering through benchmarking and monitoring of key performance indicators on the quality of supply and quality of service.

They also include highlighting some of the challenges to effective regulation in the ECOWAS power sector, with recommendations to address the challenges.

In addition, they include an overall improvement in regional electricity regulation and further development of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Market through effective regulation and service delivery.

The workshop will focus on the tools for improving economic and technical regulation – also known as Quality of Service Regulations – in the electricity sector, and participants will be engaged in detailed discussions on tariff setting, cost of service studies, continuity of supply, voltage quality and commercial quality of service regulation.

ERERA’s Regulatory Council Member, Aly Mar Ndiaye, addressed participants at the opening of the workshop.

This workshop is part of a series of training, the first of which was held in December 2019 in Banjul, The Gambia as part of ERERA’s capacity building programme on “Electricity Market and Regulation”.

The main objective of the programme is to build the capacities of the key stakeholders of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Market.

The programme is supported by the European Union under the Technical Assistance to ECOWAS for the 11th EDF Energy Governance Programme in West Africa.