In a stunning move, Aker’s AGM has relinquished its 80% interest in the South Deepwater Tano Block. This comes after a long and hard-fought battle by Ghanaian civil society organizations (CSOs) to protect the country’s interests in the oil industry.

In 2010 (or so), when the Africa Development Bank, the Brookings Institution, and the United Nations University came together to diagnose Africa’s failure to industrialise, they concluded that Africa missed the industrialisation boat mainly due to ‘bad luck’ and ‘policy failure’. In the context of the energy transition, Africa is on the lucky side of history; by virtue of her critical mineral and renewable energy resource endowment, and unique opportunity to take advantage of changing global investment patterns to attract climate financing for green industrialisation. But the risk of [renewable] policy failure persists, arguably driven by political hesitancy. If this is not addressed, when analysts convene to discuss Africa and the energy transition in the next 50 years, I fear it would be another depressing discourse about how Africa was slow to act when luck was on its side.

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has presented Covid-19 prevention educational material in Braille, along with some ‘Veronica Buckets’, nose masks and plastic buckets, to the Ghana Blind Union (GBU) at the Accra Rehabilitation Centre.

ACEP in partnership with Oxfam Ghana, sponsored the production of the Covid-19 prevention educational material in Braille for Blind Persons in Ghana, in light of the Centre’s inclusive drive and its firm belief that the fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus across the country, requires an inclusive approach if the nation is to achieve any meaningful success as far as awareness creation on its prevention is concerned.

There is an estimated number of 900,000 people living with disabilities in Ghana. This means that an estimated 3% of the population suffer some form of disability. This number is likely to increase as the population ages and the prevalence of chronic conditions which create impairment and disability rise. This is why an equitable and inclusive distribution of national wealth remains a critical element of any sustainable development agenda.

Indeed, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the National Disability Policy, the Persons with Disability Act (Act 715), the Labour Act (Act 651), as well as other international conventions to which Ghana has signed on to such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, 2006; the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights; the African Decade of the Disabled 2000-2009; and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all recognize the rights of PWDs. These international and national conventions, policies, and laws provide for the protection and equal treatment of PWDs as well as their integration into society through the provision of an enabling environment and the right infrastructure.

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has been ranked as the 14th Energy & Resource Policy Think Tank in the world, and the only energy think tank from Africa within the top 20 globally, by the Global Go-To Think Tank Index (GGTTI), in its 2019 Report.

This is yet another recognition of the Centre’s credibility and influence when it comes to research work, policy analysis, contract governance, inclusion, transparency and general advocacy, and overall output within the energy and extractive space in Africa in particular, and the world in general.

GGTTI is produced annually by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and ranks the world’s leading think tanks in a variety of categories with the help of a panel of over 1,796 peer institutions and experts from the print and electronic media, academia, public and private donor institutions, and governments around the world.