Morocco, Ethiopia Keen To Step Up Efforts To Implement Coalition For Sustainable Energy Access

Rabat – Minister of Energy, Mining and Environment, Aziz Rabbah, held on Monday a teleconference meeting with Ethiopian Minister of Water and Energy, Sileshi Bekele, which focused on the need to step up efforts for the implementation of the Coalition for Sustainable Energy Access.

This meeting, held in the presence of President and CEO of the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy, Mustapha Bakkoury, also touched on the means to be implemented to strengthen bilateral relations, particularly in the renewable energy sector where there are huge opportunities to develop projects of common interest.

It was also the opportunity to discuss the ways to speed up the implementation of the Coalition for Sustainable Energy Access, an initiative created jointly by Morocco and Ethiopia at the Climate Action summit, held on September 23, 2019, in New York, with the aim of ensuring a full access to energy for the least developed and other developing countries by 2030, said a statement from the Ministry of Energy, Mining and Environment.

These discussions, which are part of the strengthening of the energy partnership between the two countries, focused mainly on the methodological approach to be implemented to develop the activities of this coalition, promote transfer of know-how and share the best practices between beneficiaries.

The two ministers also discussed the role of international organizations in the development of partnerships of common interest, in particular the International Renewable Energy Agency, to provide support to Morocco and Ethiopia at the various projects and initiatives led at regional and continental levels, in particular this coalition.

The two sides also underlined the importance of holding meetings including Malawi, which is the global coordinator for LDCs, to discuss the modalities for setting up the Coalition Secretariat and the Advisory Board, with a view to holding in the forthcoming months the first meeting of the Advisory Board and preparing the launch of the coalition in the first quarter of 2021.

At the end of this meeting, the two ministers agreed to continue their discussions and consultations after the stabilization of the global health situation triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to finalize and implement the roadmap for the launch of the coalition.