The African Union (AU) has launched a combined business, governance, and digital platform to connect African energy regulators, industry actors, and consumers around a common interface to advance Africa’s clean energy and green transformation agenda.
The platform, Transition Fuels Oversight and Regulatory Management Accelerator (Transforma Platform), was launched on the sidelines of the Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt.
According to the AU, The launch of Transforma by Africa’s political and technocratic leadership signals the AU’s commitment to coordinating the search for durable and practical pathways to Africa’s sustainable future.
Data from the African Development Bank (AfDB) shows that over 640 million Africans have no access to energy, corresponding to an electricity access rate for African countries at just over 40 percent, the lowest in the world.
The AU explained that Transforma is a critical module of the 4D Digital Green Corridor jointly promoted by the AU and its strategic partners.
‘The Digital Green Corridor creates an “integration highway” for African countries to harmonise regulatory and investment policies in ways that advance the continent’s green transformation by leveraging existing interstate legal frameworks such as the AfCFTA and supranational policy instruments such as the AU-led Green Recovery Action Plan for Africa (GRAP)’, the union said in a statement.
‘As an agile implementation vehicle, Transforma is focused on the innovative adaptation of already existing instruments to practically speed up actions in the value chains of transition fuels, especially natural gas, and its derivatives, across Africa rather than putting up new policies and legal instruments’.
Transforma was launched by AU partners, including the Africa Refiners and Distribution Association, the Cleopatra Group, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), and Afrochampions.
‘The United Nations Development Programme, through its Africa Influencers for Development initiative, is supporting the ongoing rollout of Transforma in two African regions: West and East Africa, with others to follow’, the statement added.
Source: African Union
Photo source: ILRI
