Somaliland Energy Ministry Sets Out Rural Solar Electrification Plan

On 15 November 2020, Somaliland Standard reported that the Ministry of Energy and Minerals had held a workshop on the investiture for rural areas solar electrification projects at Hotel Mansoor. The report is the only record in this evidence of the event, and it is a record of a meeting, not of construction.

According to the report, the workshop sits inside two existing programmes: the Somaliland Electricity Access Project (SEAP) and, in particular, the Somaliland Off-Grid Solar Grant facility. Somaliland Standard reported that the programme is sponsored by the World Bank, with the ministry acting as facilitator through Dahabshiil Bank. The purpose of the workshop, the report said, was to inform stakeholders about a project intended to fund them in solar electrification to rural areas.

Opening the workshop, Minister Hon Jama Mohamoud Egal described the project as a pilot scheme being done for the first time in the country, and said Somaliland was perceived to be the country with the most expensive electricity, with the scheme tailored to cut costs for the people given that the existing supply came from fuel generators, Somaliland Standard reported. The minister also said the project brings stakeholders and especially the line commission recently established to improve services in the sector, according to the same report. The minister's statements do not give a cost or tariff figure behind the claim of most expensive electricity.

Deputy Finance Minister Hon. Musa Ibrahim Salaf said industrialization can never kick off without electricity, and thanked the World Bank for the grant, Somaliland Standard reported. That acknowledgement does not carry a grant amount, a currency, a signing date or a disbursement status.

The report also lists the Chairman of the National Energy Commission, Mr Ahmed Farah Adare, and the Director General of the Ministry, Mr Mohamed Yusuf Ismail, among the other speakers. Separately, it notes a GIS and remote sensing course conducted by among others Dr Abdo Said al Maqtari, and that the minister had been on an official tour to Egypt at the invitation of his counterpart Hon Tarek El Molla, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, with whom several aspects of cooperation in the sector were agreed upon.

What the report does not establish

The workshop is not evidence of work on the ground. Somaliland Standard's report does not state the pilot location or locations, the scope, the timeline, or any procurement, contract or installation that followed. It does not say whether the project has since continued, expanded or delivered electricity access, and the evidence here contains no post-2020 update on SEAP or the Somaliland Off-Grid Solar Grant facility.

The grant itself is similarly undefined in the record: no value, currency, signing date or disbursement status appears. The name and establishment date of the line commission referenced by the minister are not given, and Dahabshiil Bank's exact financial or administrative role is not specified. The report does not identify the other instructors on the GIS and remote sensing course, and it does not describe the Egypt cooperation as a signed agreement or an investment, nor give its value or scope.

What the record does show is a named ministry workshop, a named institutional framework, and named officials attaching the scheme to cost reduction and electrification access. What it does not show is a financed, sited or built rural solar project.