The West Africa Regional Coordinator for Alliance of Civil Society Organisation -ACCESS Coalition Secretariat, Mr Ezekiel Chibeze has advised CSOs championing climate change and clean energy to position themselves well to attract funding from donors.
For him with the limited funding from donors, most CSOs fail to meet the required criteria for support.
The requirement referencing proper documentation, Mr Chibeze said was the major fall of some compent CSOs to receive funding to support their project.
Hence he encouraged participants to put in place right measure to get funding for their projects
ACCESS for West Africa is a regional coalition for CSOs in West Africa with it’s West Africa Regional Secretariat in Ghana hosted by the Strategic Youth Network for Development ( SYND)
He made these remarks when addressing participants at the Access Consultative workshop with the World Bank and AfDB in Accra last Friday.
The engagement was to give CSOs the platform to interact with the two banks on its Country Strategy Paper and other relevant policies with regards to climate change and clean energy.
Similarly, it was to abreast CSOs of the policies of these two banks.
Mr Chibeze said he hoped that the policies of these two banks this year would be more tailored towards climate change and it’s adverse effects on Ghanaians.
” This will help CSOs to complement government efforts to fight against the menace.
“As CSOs working in climate change and energy space, we feel it’s important to engage the banks to understand how they’re supporting our countries when it comes to climate change and energy” he stated.
To him, CSOs saw themselves more as stakeholders contributing to the fight against climate change, hence supporting the banks numerous policies in that regards.
Speaking at the Engagement Meeting, the Africa Development Bank(AFDB) Representative, Mr Bekale Ollame, explained that, the bank sought the interest of member countries and always desired to engage key relevant stakeholders such as CSOs to have a strong policy paper for member countries which Ghana is not an exception.
He further indicated that, the bank always ensured that, it’s policies and projects reflected the needs and wants of the country and other relevant stakeholders like the CSOs and youth groups.
Outlining some of the policies, Mr. Bekale Ollame who is also in charge of the country programs pointed out that, most projects or programs consisted of two pillars.
“First- support for country’s industrialization and private sector development activities and also support infrastructure of member countries, thus domestic regional programs.
Second pillar, two outcomes is expected; the first one is improvement of transport availability for trade and inequality reduction whiles the second one is to facilitate domestic and cross-border trade and cross cutting themes” he stated.
Mr Ollame entreated CSOs to continue to engage them and other key stakeholders to ensure effective utilization of resources in the fight against climate change and ensuring clean energy in Africa.
