Strathmore Environment Sustainability Club (SESC)’s Livingstone Odero, Samuel Greg, Alex Osunga, and Jackson Juma attended the 18^th annual East African Power Industry Convention – EAPIC ran from 20th -23rd September 2016.

 

This started with a Pre-Conference Masterclass on Developing and structuring Bankable Projects in East Africa. This class was aimed at assisting project developers and key stakeholders in driving their projects to bankability stage, with expert advice on attracting resources and capital, the opportunity to meet potential partners, and how to manage the process effectively to accelerate the bankability process.

 

What are financiers looking for? Engaging the donor community: Mitigating FX risk through local currency finance solutions: Solutions for Stakeholder involvement.

 

Among the featured speakers at the conference were: Joseph Njoroge – Principal Secretary, Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, Kenya: Dheu Mathouk Ding – Minister of Energy and Dams, South Sudan: Juliana Pallangyo – Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Energy and Minerals, Tanzania: Mohammed Ahmed Siraj – State Minister, Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electricity, Sudan: Liban Mohamed H. Mohamoud – Director, Department of Energy, Ministry of Energy and Minerals, Somaliland: Lebbi Changullah – Secretary General, EAPP, Ethiopia: Ana Hajduka – CEO, AfricaGreenCo, UK: Andrew Njoba – Team Leader, Clean Energy Promotion Program, Kenya Association of Manufacturers, Kenya.

 

The opening keynote session tackled the topic Leading the East African Power and Energy Strategy. The topics discussed on this include Smart Africa: Leading Technological Transformation, Determined leadership fast tracking a powerful and sustainable East African economic bloc, Giving ourselves a pat on the back: Has East Africa Reached an Electricity Supply/Demand Balance? And Energy Saving Procurement Contracts.

 

SESC’s delegates got an opportunity to network and establish workable partnerships with several industry players and participants through the Exhibition Technical Workshops and networking coffee breaks. EAPIC together with Globeleq hosted 20 of tomorrow’s brightest young energy professionals in East African Region. This new initiative encouraged students to pursue careers in power and energy engineering. This initiative provided the opportunity to student delegates to debate possible solutions for sustainable development of the energy sector and the role they would play as future leaders and provided a networking platform to connect these students with internships and job opportunities.

 

Despite Prof. Izael Pereira Da Silva (SESC’s Current Patron and DVC Research and Innovation, Strathmore University) absence due to professional commitments outside the country, several industry players and market participants cherished and praised his great job and commitment with regards to walking the talk and preaching the gospel of renewable energy and solar for wealth and health.

 

Strathmore University’s Solar Project also took Centre stage in some of our discussions with industry players, expressing their interests to embrace the same in their native countries, key among them being engineers and delegates from Rwanda and Uganda. The Ugandan delegates took time to discuss potential gains and macroeconomic impacts of solar energy in changing the African narrative, from both a sustainability angle and embracing the green initiatives, while walking the green talk. Actually, the imperative of green initiatives is shaping global talks and to our surprise, billions of shillings have already been set aside to help in research and innovation so as to develop solutions for some of these challenges.

 

We also undertook a visit to Olkaria site, courtesy of the special invitation from Claire O’Connell – Event Director, EAPIC. This visit provided the delegates with a chance to interact and learn from highly trained geothermal energy experts at the KenGen Geothermal Power Plant. Later on, we had a chance to visit the different selected Geothermal power plants across the 204km2 KenGen’s allowable geographical field. These included visiting the 150MW Power Plant, a visit to one of the industrial pans, a visit to one Wellhead Generation plant and finally the visit to ‘Mvuke Spa’ – The Geothermal spa offering a bouquet of adventure, spice comfort, luxury and true African hospitality.

 

 

Article by Livingstone S. Odero 4^th Year BBS Actuarial Science & SESC Outgoing Chairperson.