The chief executive officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Yofi Grant has emphasised the need for the private sector to partner government in tackling challenges in the power sector in Africa.
Speaking at the ongoing third edition of the Kusi Ideas Festival in Accra on Friday (8 December), Grant says the developed world is practising neo-colonialism.
“… Imagine if private sector partners approach the government and say that this agreement we cannot extend your grid to the consumer, and then you need to partner with us to support the whole environment and ecosystem.”
“So it doesn’t have to be one replacing the other. It can be one joining with the other and we are seeing modules like that operate in countries like Germany. Private people are selling back to the main grid when they produce more power than required.”
“I don’t see why it cannot be done even easier in Africa. So there is a real opportunity for the private sector to partner with governments in solving the energy problem. It’s not a preserve of the private sector or government, it is a preserve of the consumer,” he said.
The theme for this year’s Kusi Ideas Festival is: “How Africa Transforms After the Virus” and subtitled “Beyond the Return: African Diaspora and New Possibilities”.
Watch the video below:
About Kusi
Nation Media Group (NMG) launched the Kusi Ideas Festival in 2019 during its 60th-anniversary celebrations. The festival aims to be an “ideas transaction market” for the challenges facing Africa, and for the various solutions and innovations the continent is undertaking to secure its future in the 21st century.
The kusi is the southerly trade wind that blows across the Indian Ocean between April and mid-September, and enabled trade up north along the East African coast and between Asia and Africa for millennia.
Beyond trade, over the centuries, the kusi and other trade winds made possible cultural, intellectual and technological exchanges, and considerably shaped the history of the nations on the east coast of Africa, the eastern hinterland, and the wider Indian Ocean rim.
In the 21st century, the spirits of the trade winds express themselves in new ways. The Indian Ocean is a rich bed for the fibre-optic cables that make the Information Age possible in a large part of Africa.
The first Kusi Ideas Festival was held in Kigali, Rwanda, and was co-hosted by President Paul Kagame.
Fred Dzakpata
To register to attend the Kusi Ideas Festival, visit: www.kusiideasfestival.com or dial *920*233# (AirtelTigo, MTN or Vodafone).
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