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Deputy Minister of Energy l, Ing. Edmond Nonie, has presided over the launch of a project that aims to provide some 250,000 cookstoves to thousands of beneficiaries across the country.
“We are excited about this development. We are a country that has a lot of young people who spend a lot of time in finding biomass or wood for cooking. This type of innovative technology will help our young people save time that would otherwise have been committed to collecting wood,” the minister said.
He added that despite the fact that sustenance was essential to everyone’s life, too many hours and energies were being expended in collecting wood.
Ing. Nonie was full of praise for the innovative nature of the financing of the project, partnering with Delagua Group, noting also that the project aligned with the government’s Big Five Game Changers with respect to creating jobs for the youth.
“This project has provided jobs for close to 1500 young people. The type of training or capacity building that people have benefitted from will enable beneficiaries to move forward and create their own businesses,” he said.
He spoke about plans by the government to set up a rural electrification agency that will be headquartered in the provinces. He thanked Delagua Group for the project.
Chief Operating Officer of Delagua Group, Eaun McDougall, said he was excited to be at the launch of the project.
He said his group plans to replicate the Rwandan model in Sierra Leone where they had rolled out a 1.5 million cookstove project and thanked the Ministry of Energy for the support and partnership.
Country Director of Delagua, Marrah Mansaray, said the presence of officials from the Ministry of Energy was an indication of how committed they were to the project. He took the officials on a tour of his group’s warehouse.
Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Lawrence Kamara, spoke about the benefits of the project and the irresistible shift to renewable energy.
Sierra Leone is among countries suffering the most from the effects of climate change with a vast area of its forest gone due to logging for timber and charcoal burning. Climate experts have warned that with lack of innovative and clean cooking methods, the situation could get worse.
Sierra Leone’s development paradigm – distribute free things, willing hands ready to grab. Today’s set of ‘politicians’ are nothing but scammers; are short on ideas on how to stimulate development, instead they’ve found the easy way out – distribute free stuff and create dependency. Under this framework, this country will never develop in the true sense to the word.