Development of GIS tool for planning and monitoring of energy access in Ghana

Following a request from the Ministry of Energy, Government of Ghana and from ECOWAS Commission for support to the development of needs assessment and planning methodologies for energy access strategies, the EUEI PDF is supporting The Energy Centre (TEC) at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana to develop related GIS-based tools for planning and monitoring of energy access across the country. These tools will also serve as a model for other countries of the region.

June 2009:

Ghana Energy Access Review (GEAR) Roundtable at KNUST

Honourable Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, Minister of Energy, Ghana, visited The Energy Centre, KNUST on Friday 5 June 2009 to give a keynote address at the first Ghana Energy Access Review (GEAR) Roundtable.  Dr Oteng-Adjei affirmed the commitment of the Government of Ghana to provide access to electricity for all Ghanaians by the year 2020. He also affirmed the Government’s intention to enable 50% of Ghanaians to use LPG for cooking and the rest to have access to improved woodfuel-based cooking services by 2015.

The first GEAR Roundtable was organised by the GIS-based Energy Access Project sponsored by the European Union Energy Initiative’s Partnership Dialogue Facility (EUEI-PDF). The Project, coordinated by Dr George Obeng of the Technology Consultancy Centre in the College of Engineering at KNUST, started in January 2009 and is expected to be completed in December 2010.  The Project aims to contribute towards effective implementation of policies and plans for achieving energy access targets through the use of GIS to collate and analyze national level data and provide timely information for policy-making purposes in Ghana.

For more information on the GEAR Roundtable, see website of The Energy Centre at KNUST: http://energycenter.knust.edu.gh/pages/news.php?id=32.

Attached for download the keynote address by the Minister of Energy, Ghana.