Sierra Leonean Vice President pays official working visit to Energy Ministry
The Vice President of Sierra Leone, Dr Mohammed Julie Jalloh, undertook a day’s official working visit to Ghana’s Ministry of Energy in Accra.
It formed part of a two-day official visit to Ghana to foster collaboration between the two countries and how to provide, reliable, quality and affordable energy services to both countries.
He was accompanied by Alhaji Kanja Sesay, Minister of Energy Sierra Leone, Mrs Francess Anderson, Sierra Leonean High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Cyril Grant, Technical Advisor and Sulemana Abubakar, Deputy Director at the Ministry of Energy, Sierra Leone.
They were welcomed to the Ministry by Mr Mohammed Amin Adam, a Deputy Minister of Energy and his two other deputy ministers, Andrew Egyapa Mercer and Owuraku Aidoo.
In his welcome address, Mr Adam recalled the long standing bilateral relationship that existed between Ghana and Sierra Leone and pledged the former’s commitment towards their common interest.
He explained that the Energy Ministry remained the heartbeat of the country’s economy and government was doing all it could to enable it play that role effectively and efficiently.
Mr Adam said the visit by the Vice President and his delegation amply demonstrated that both countries held its relationship dearly.
“Learning from each other is a matter of course, because apart from getting us to know each other and being connected to each other, it also promotes South-South corporation,” he said.
Mr Adam said it was important to learn from each other rather than people with different context and environment.
On his part, Dr Jalloh explained that the mission of his delegation in Accra was largely experientially and underpinned by two objectives.
He said the first objective was to find out ways to tap into Ghana’s experience in accessing the Millennium Challenge Account Compact.
This, he said his country had qualified for the Compact One and since Ghana had already accessed both one and two, they deemed it necessary to come and understudy the processes to enable them overcome the possible bureaucratic bottlenecks in the processes.
The Vice President explained that their compact was mainly a power compact which would enable it deal with its power challenges.
He said apart from collaborating and learning for the compact, Sierra Leone also wanted to learn from how Ghana had moved from energy insufficiency to the over capacity that it currently enjoys.
He noted that since coming into power some few years ago, his government had been able to move its energy capacity from 16 per cent to 31 per cent.
BY CLIFF EKUFFUL
