Communicating Energy in Southern Africa

The project will contribute to SADC’s objective of creating access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy services in the SADC Region. Although having a rich endowment of energy resources such as natural gas, hydropower, wind and solar the SADC Region faces serious energy challenges. The prevailing instability is compounded by many factors, e.g. energy takes an essentially national as opposed to a regional approach; tariff levels that are caught between the viability and access conundrum; capacity issues at both the national and the regional levels and energy sector reforms that are generally perceived to be moving at a sluggish pace.

Communication mechanisms and tools are needed to broaden awareness on issues at play and thus contribute to finding lasting solutions.

The purpose of the project is that a functional platform for information sharing and knowledge dissemination contributes to informed policy decisions about the use and control of the energy resources in the SADC Region. And as such the expected outputs are mainly knowledge products namely

• 6 editions of ‘SADC Today’ per year and one ‘Southern African News Features’ per month

• at least 2 bulletins of ‘SADC Energy Thematic Group and policy briefs per year

• an annual ‘SADC Energy Investment Book’

• the first edition of the ‘SADC Energy Monitor’ and

• the maintenance of the ‘SADC Energy Portal’, www.sardc.net and www.sadc.int.