World Bank plans roadmap on Zambia’s energy transition
THE World Bank has planned to develop a roadmap that will guide the country’s agenda on energy transition, following global transition to the use of low-carbon emitting energy resources so as to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The roadmap will be developed in collaboration with Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development as well and Ministry of Finance and National Planning.
Finance and National Planning Minister, Situmbeko Musokotwane explained that the roadmap will unlock bottlenecks in existing policy that will lead to reforms, identify areas of potential investment and capacity building for all relevant institutions.
Dr Musokotwane talked about Government’s strides being made to move the transition to a green economy forward.
He said this yesterday in Lusaka at the workshop on the Development of a Roadmap for Leveraging Zambia’s Energy Transition Minerals Endowments for Economic Transformation.
“Our country is endowed with many key mineral resources such as copper, nickel and cobalt.
“It is for such a reason that Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have entered in a memorandum of understating to develop a cross-border integrated value chain for the production of electric vehicle batteries,” Dr Musokotwane said.
This, he explained, is intended to contribute to the adaptation efforts and play a role in the move towards clean energy.
At the same function, World Bank Regional Director - Infrastructure for Eastern and Southern Africa, Wendy Hughes, said the institution is working closely with a cross-sectoral Government
team with the objective of preparing a strategic roadmap to realise Zambia’s economic transformation potential from the energy transition minerals.
Dr Hughes explained that this will include estimates of required investments for scaling mineral and value-added output, prioritised inventories of investment targets, financing instruments and timelines.
The roadmap will also include prioritised plans for technical assistance to support reforms and capacity building and proposed frameworks for coordination with neighbouring countries.