Kyle O‘Sullivan, Africa Director for Irish Aid in the Department of Foreign Affairs, paid a courtesy call on Hon. Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, Chairman of the Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security (PI-CREF) at his State House office.
Speaking with Chairman Yumkella, O‘Sullivan, who is in Sierra Leone for a short visit, and is marking Ireland‘s National Day ( St. Patrick‘s Day) here in Freetown, noted the purpose of his visit: to align the Irish government‘s priorities with the Sierra Leone government‘s stated intentions, as they work on their five-year strategic plan. “In 8 weeks, we hope to finish our five-year strategic plan, and we would be happy to align priorities in our aim to support Sierra Leone to help the most vulnerable in society to climb the socioeconomic ladder,” said O’Sullivan.
In his response, Yumkella not only welcomed O’Sullivan to Sierra Leone, but also gave him a briefing on the three pillars his mandate covers – climate change, renewable energy and food security, and their critical importance for Sierra Leone’s socioeconomic developmental challenges. In particular, Yumkella noted the nexus between energy and climate change, energy and food security and energy and clean cooking, all of which matter if Sierra Leone is to meet energy access challenges and build climate resilience and food security. On solving the energy crisis the country faces, Yumkella noted that he believes Sierra Leone must tackle both its bulk power, as well as her off-grid production through the use of renewables. “We need both sources of power to drive our economy, to increase our agriculture output, to deal with the unreliability of power, and to help businesses. Tougher energy reforms and a comprehensive plan to revamp our sector are needed,” said PI-CREF’s Chairman. “We need to fix our utilities to ensure we have private sector companies signing PPA.” On clean cooking, he reminded the Irish diplomat and team that about six hundred thousand people – mostly women and children, die prematurely due to indoor air pollution. “In Sierra Leone,” Yumkella furthered, “our people are cutting down the trees and we are losing our ecosystem because of the lack of clean cooking solutions.”
Next week, as a follow-up to the Energy Roundtable, in partnership with the Ministries of Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Gender and Children’s Affairs and the Office of the Gender Advisor to the President, “we are hosting a special session to begin to bring awareness to our people the gender dimensions to energy and economic empowerment.” Next Wednesday, PI-CREC will be hosting the CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) in Freetown and finalize discussions on the launch of a Clean Cooking Delivery Unit, which will be hosted at PI-CREF. We need climate finance to ensure our country, and in particular, the communities benefit and build the resilience they need,” underscored Yumkella on the issue of climate change and its detrimental impact on Sierra Leone. “At the moment, the issue of climate finance is a wild west, and we must not forget that there are also rights issues involved with communities. We need to do much more to understand the landscape and map out who the major players are.” Yumkella hopes his office will be able to convene the first meeting in coordination with the relevant MDAs, so all the stakeholders know the lay of the land as it relates to carbon finance. “This is quite a useful and impressive briefing I have received here on the priorities of government,” diplomat O’Sullivan emphasized.
He noted that his conversations with the Chairman will help them to better align their priorities for the five-year strategic plan to help the poor in Sierra Leone. Accompanying Director O’Sullivan was the Irish Ambassador to Sierra Leone, H.E. Aidan Fitzpatrick and Carol Hannon, Irish Aid Head of Development. Pete Kaindaneh, Chief Technical Adviser, and Anthony Kamara accompanied Chairman Yumkella from the PI-CREF team.
