ACEP Rolls Out Citizens’ Energy Manifesto 2016 Book

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has finally made available to the public its Citizens’ Energy Manifesto 2016 book after a region to region tour to elicit views and opinions of the ordinary people regarding the management of the energy sector by political parties.

ACEP is of the view that the Manifesto ushers in an era in which elections become platforms for generating policy reforms, building political consensus on policies and creating an effective mechanism for holding elected officials accountable.

The Executive Director of Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam said the manifesto process took a more futuristic and consultative approach of social accountability to take policy discussions out of the arena of expert and scholarly opinions to direct engagement with citizens on their expectations from their next political party in power.

He added that the manifesto intends to reverse the process where political parties share their manifestoes so late in the campaign period and citizens have limited time to digest, seek clarity and be informed by those promises to a process where citizens inform political parties manifesto with their own expectations.

“We are by this giving meaning to the principle of bottom-up decision making in which national policies reflect the true aspirations of the citizens. This is what we call the peoples' democracy," Dr. Amin noted.

Dr. Amin indicated that over the past three decades, Ghana has not followed the path of breaking away from the historical underinvestment in its power infrastructure which has now brought the country to its knees, getting only temporary reliefs at the mercy of vampire political investors and its neighbour, Nigeria for supply of fuel.

This, he said, in addition to poor management and financial challenges has dwarfed the potential of what could be a strong middle-income economy. Power cuts have been cyclical and each of the load shedding over the years have been worse than the previous.

Dr. Amin believes that citizens have to be part of the next steps for governing the energy sector.

According to him, the "Citizens' Energy Manifesto" should therefore rather become the social contract between the next government and citizens to ensure that there is a national, strategic and corporate resolve to manage the energy sector efficiently.

He posited that the next steps after this Manifesto will involve two activities-the first one, which is the ACEP Energy Manifesto Monitor, will summarize the energy sector promises of the political parties benchmarked against the Citizens Energy Manifesto and published widely.

The second one, he explained is that the Energy Manifesto Expert Panel will feature experts at a public forum to scrutinize the energy sector promises and policy proposals of the political parties carried live on Television and Radio.

Dr. Amin noted that the Expert Panel is particularly interesting because they must break away from consuming the sweet manifesto promises of the parties to scrutinizing the feasibility of their promises being implemented and the extent to which such proposals can effectively address our challenges.

“As we wait for the manifestoes of the parties, we are already getting indications of their proposals some of which clearly corroborate the expectations of our citizens contained in the Citizens’ Energy Manifesto,” Dr. Amin stated.