One on One With Executive Director of Africa Energy Commission

Mr. Rashid Ali Abdallah is the Executive Director of the African Energy Commission (AFREC). He took a moment of his time to share with us his thoughts on the sidelines of the 9th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency.

“Africa and indeed the World must and should embrace energy the sustainable way and this can be done through building our capacity in order to have better planning so as to achieve our rising energy needs. Africa also needs to invest in capacity-building of her people so as to train them on how to collect and analyze data, so as to develop the right policy especially to govern the bio-energy which comprises well over 50% of the African Continent’s energy needs. We are emphasizing that access to energy is very important.

Africa is well endowed with natural gas for example, but before allowing foreign exploitation of this resource, its very important to see to it that it first benefits us.”

Mr. Rashid has over 22 years of experience in the energy field at the national, regional, and continental level. Under his leadership, AFREC has developed several programmes and undertook several initiatives to support the African Energy Sector Transformation and African Union Member states’ effort toward energy transition, by creating the enabling policies and strategies to increase investment for the African Energy Sector, and to meet the AU Agenda 2063, Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and the global commitment on climate change.

Mr. Abdallah has previously served as the Head of Energy Division within the Department of the Infrastructure and Energy at the African Union.
Mr. Abdallah hold a M.Sc. Project Management from Birmingham University – UK, Post Graduate Diploma in Energy Engineering and a B.Sc. (Hons) Mechanical Engineering from Khartoum University- Sudan.