Nigeria’s vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, called on his fellow African nations to focus greater attention on development of renewable energy as major source of electricity during a speech at the African Energy Leaders’ Group that was held in Cote d’Ivoire.
The vice president said in his speech published by Nigeria’s state news agency, NAN, “although solar power is expensive now, but with all the investments in the world and creativity coming into it, it is becoming cheaper and cheaper. So, it represents for us a major source of power and renewable energy anywhere is a win-win situation.”
“There is no reason at all why renewable energy should not be our focus in Africa, in West Africa, in the next few years,” he added. Osinbajo went on to say that there was so much to do in that regard and so much to be discussed with the private sector about what to do in that particular area.
Osinbajo said that a reduction in bureaucracy and tariffs was called for in order to make the business environment on the continent both attractive and profitable. “I think there is need for us to reduce the bureaucracy involved in doing business in our different environment, first of all for local investments and then for international investments of any kind. There is a great need for freeing up the environment; there are just too many bureaucratic bottlenecks, too many stops, too many places you need to go to for approvals.”
As an example he used the bureaucracy in his country’s power sector, “so many of them trying to get a power purchase agreement takes so many months, sometimes years. And part of the reason is that we set up structures which we assume will make business easier but coming to grips with some of them involve so much time and energy. We have so many structures set up and these are standard structures all over the world but the truth is that they take far too much time.”
“It is possible for us to have one-stop agency for a lot of bureaucracies that attend to getting approvals doing business in the environment,’’ he added.