The Gambia’s Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Mambury Njie, last week Thursday appeared before the Gambian Parliament and tabled the U$25 Million ‘Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Threshold Program Grant agreement between the Gambia and United States of America.
The grant, inter alia, aims to support the implementation of critical institutional and policy reforms that address binding constraints to economic growth in the Gambia.
Minister Njie reminded the assembly that the government of The Gambia launched the National Development Plan (2018-2021) in 2018, which aimed to “deliver good governance and accountability, social cohesion, and national reconciliation and a revitalized and transformed economy for the well-being of all Gambians”. He said two central strategic priorities of the NDP are related to the agreement, namely to restore good governance and the rule of law, and building our infrastructure and restoring energy services to power the national economy.
Stating the MCC Threshold Program Grant amount is USS25,000,000.00, Njie told NAMs the government, under the leadership of President Adama Barrow, has made “tremendous strides to redress the energy crisis this country is facing”.
On development objective of the grant, he noted that the above-mentioned Program Goal consists of two key projects: the Power Sector Governance Project (the ‘Governance project’), which aims to develop more effective, accountable, and transparent power sector governance in the Gambia; and the “Power Sector Operations Project (the ‘Operations project’) is to improve NAWEC’s capability to operate the Gambian power system in a manner that reduces the frequency and duration of outages, “and is consistent with The Gambia’s universal access and conditional emissions goals as put forward in its nationally-determined contributions (NDCs)”.
He explained that the Governance Project focuses on building the capacity of power sector stakeholders to identify and solve problems in the legal and regulatory environment, the policy and planning environment, NAWEC’s structure and governance, and external oversight and accountability areas.
“In addressing effectiveness, accountability and transparency, the Governance Project is designed to bolster performance, support the government’s existing efforts to provide universal access to electricity by 2025, increase gender representation and participation in the sector, and prioritize, where possible, public-private partnerships and transition to lower carbon forms of energy”, Njie outlined. He further stated that the Governance Project uses a “learning by doing” approach facilitated by expert advisors (the “Facilitated Change Management Advisor”). The said advisor supports teams of stakeholders working to identify the underlying causes of legal, policy, regulatory, administrative, access, and operational challenges, and then to solve those problems through a disciplined, interactive and action-oriented approach, he indicated. The Operations Project aims to develop critical skills, tools, and processes at NAWEC to address challenges in the following areas: power sector operations, customer operations, finance, and change management.
“The Operations Project is coordinated with and builds upon work financed by the Government and by other donors to ensure close alignment with NAWEC’s strategic operational plan, as well as The Gambia’s Electricity”, the lawmakers heard.
Minister Njie said the Project is expected to operationalise NAWEC’s gender policy and improve institutional and operational capacity to achieve the country’s universal access goals as stated in the “Electricity Roadmap”.
“To advance the work of the Operations Project, the Government shall establish a team to coordinate the Project, the membership of which shall include NAWEC staff with appropriate expertise and authority, as agreed between MCC and the Government (the “Transformation Team”)”, he informed the National Assembly.
Njie pointed out also that the formulation of the Project was through a multi-stakeholder engagement; and that the process involved stakeholders from the Office of The President, Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Ministry of Justice, NAWEC, the private sector and some International Partners.
“Honourable Speaker, the National Assembly is hereby informed of the signing of the ‘MCC Threshold Program Grant’ and is kindly requested to support its implementation by providing overall oversight”, the Finance minister said.
He stressed that the effective implementation of the Agreement, would contribute significantly to the attainment of the NDP objectives, especially the strategic objective of the government to restore good governance, the rule of law, building the infrastructure and restoring energy services to power the country’s economy.
“Honourable Speaker, considering the forgoing, I respectfully submit to this Honourable House, the above-mentioned Agreement for consideration and ratification. Honourable Speaker, I beg to move”, were his words.
After the debate and consideration on the MCC Agreement Grant, the National Assembly Members gave parliamentary blessings to the Agreement by ratifying it.
