SHOWCASING PROGRESS IN THE PRODUCTION OF H2ATLAS IN WEST AFRICA

@Peace Ahovi

A two-day Technical West African H2ATLAS workshop was held in Accra, Ghana, to showcase the progress made in the production of the West Africa H2ATLAS and to finalize the Atlas itself.

The workshop was aimed at bringing together experts from the German Research Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich and a consortium of African research institutions from 15 West African countries to explore the potentials of green hydrogen production from the enormous renewable energy resources within the African continent.

Speaking at the event, Dr. Solomon Agbo, the Project Coordinator, said “The H2ATLAS workshop was designed to give the 15 countries who have worked close to two years a sense of ownership on work done in West Africa, to define the results, bring all participants on the same page and to defend the results submitted to produce the Atlas. All these was done in a transparent manner” He added that West African Countries could get more benefits as they could be exporters of green hydrogen in the future. There was so much potential to produce both hydrogen and electricity, thereby boosting electricity access in West Africa. He also appreciated the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Project management Agency Jülich (PtJ) for the funding to make this initiative a reality.

Dr. Moumini Savadogo, the Executive Director of WASCAL, mentioned that currently, one of the outcomes of the H2ATLAS project was the capacity being built for 60 students (two students from each country) under the international master’s programme on renewable energy and green hydrogen. Hence the respective countries should open their doors for these students upon their return.

The country representatives were delighted to see the results of their hard work and pledged to meet the students from their countries upon return, champion the green hydrogen and be good ambassadors of the project after seeing the atlas results presented.

The workshop was attended by experts from across West Africa and Germany. The H2 ATLAS project is an initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In this project, the German research Centre Forschungszentrum Jülich partners with a consortium of African research institutions to explore the potentials of green hydrogen production from the enormous renewable energy resources within the African continent. All fifteen ECOWAS countries participated by their national teams which constituted of 5 team members. The project implementation workplan required the national teams to collect as well as val­idate them national level to develop the Western Africa Atlas

@Peace Ahovi