Accra, Aug 7, GNA - Energy Minister Joseph Kofi Adda on Tuesday urged African countries to consciously invest in human resource development to ensure sustainable development in the continent's energy sector.

Addressing the opening session of a colloquium on Human Resource development in Accra organized by electric power producers and bulk users, Mr Adda said human factor was responsible for unacceptable losses suffered in the energy sector in Africa.

"Here, I'm talking specifically about embarking on an aggressive agenda to reduce unacceptable commercial losses that generally pertaining to our region. The human factor is primarily responsible for this situation and we can reverse it through the application of high standards of code of ethics," Mr Adda said.

Union Producers, Transporters and Distributors of Electric Power in Africa (UPDEA) the colloquium, hosted by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Mr Adda observed that many utility services in Africa, set up as part of the Civil Service, had taken on functions, which were far removed from their core business of production and distribution and had failed to catch up with the times by not adopting good corporate principles.

Also, inadequate power supply and the deteriorating quality of service were not only an engineering challenge for the utility companies, but also critical economic and social issues for governments. Mr Adda urged utility companies to begin reforming themselves, refocus on their mandates and shed the activities that were not central to their operations.

He called for a co-ordination of efforts in the re-engineering of human capital, adding that the spirit of integration in the distribution of electricity within the West African sub-region must be expanded to cover all the countries.

Mr Adda said the West African Power Pool, which had the objective of improving the quality of power supply, and the establishment of interconnection of infrastructure and development of hydroelectric power must be executed to its logical conclusions.

Mr Jude Osafo Adu-Amankwah, Managing Director of ECG, said Africa was experiencing an energy shortfall largely due to an increased demand. He said frequent and constant switching of energy supply equipment had had a serious toll on infrastructure and gave an assurance that ECG would underscore the essence of developing the human resource to deal with the energy problems.

Mr Mutima Sakrini Herman, Secretary General of UPDEA, said access to electricity had rather become a luxury and large sections were without electricity.