The Turkson Foundation in collaboration with KNUST will organise a Symposium on Energy Access in West Africa at the University of Cape Coast, 30th January 2010.  This will be the 3rd in a series of Annual John Turkson Memorial Lectures; it will be held under the chairmanship of the Vice Chancellor of KNUST and hosted by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.  

The theme for the Symposium will be “Clean Energy for All in West Africa by 2030?!”  Keynote presentations will be made by Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei and Prof Ogunlade Davidson, the Ministers of Energy from Ghana and Sierra Leone, respectively.  Dr John Christensen, Director of UNEP RISOE Center in Denmark (where Dr Turkson worked), will speak on Climate Change and Energy in West Africa and Dr Gordon Mckenzie, a Senior Fellow at the same Center, will also do a presentation on  Africa – EU Energy Partnership and Prospects for West Africa.  

The Turkson Foundation was founded by friends and associates of the late Dr John Kofi Turkson who met his untimely death on 30the January 2000 in a crash on Kenyan Airways flight KQ 451 which should have taken him on assignment on behalf of the Danish aid agency, DANIDA, from Ghana to Uganda.  Dr Turkson worked for many years as Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana and he subsequently served as a Programme Officer at the UNEP Risoe Centre in Roskilde, Denmark.

The Symposium, which coincides with the 10th anniversary of the death of Dr John Kofi Turkson, will address core issues relating to energy access in West Africa in full view of the fact that only 30% of the population in West Africa currently have access to electricity and only a few countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal) have household electricity access rates above 35%.  The Symposium should also address issues relating to biomass energy which forms the bulk of energy consumption in the region, with many countries like Liberia and Burkina Faso having more than 95% of their population relying on traditional biomass for cooking and heating.

To download the Concept Note for the Symposium please click here.

For a Tributes Collection with more information on Dr John Kofi Turkson please click here.