Miquelina Menezes is the new President of ALER

The first mandate of ALER’s Governing Structure has ended, and ALER’s members, gethered on March 14th have elected a new Board of Directors, Supervisory Board and the Board of the General Assembly Meeting. In addition, the 2017 Annual Report and Accounts and the 2018 Action Plan and Budget were approved.

ALER’s General Assembly has convened on March 14, with 70% of its Members represented at the meeting.

The 2017 Report and Accounts and the 2018 Action Plan and Budget were unanimously approved.

2017 was undoubtedly a very important year for a ALER, to consolidate its activities and its relevance both in the lusophone space and in the renewable energy sector at international level.

The highlights of the previous year go to the implementation of the activities foreseen in the contract agreement with RECP, namely the publication of the 2nd edition of the Mozambique National Renewable Energies Status Report, the Portuguese translation of the Mini-Grid Policy Toolkit, the organization of the Conference "Renewables in the Electrification of Mozambique" with more than 300 participants, surpassing all expectations, and the support to the creation of AMER – the Mozambican Renewable Energy Association.

In addition, two new financing agreements were signed with UNIDO, for activities in Guinea Bissau, and with Instituto Camões, for the publication of the São Tomé and Príncipe report.

ALER completed the year with a positive result, in line with the foreseen budget, and with a total of equity and liability that allows the Association to face 2018 optimistically.

The challenges for this year are therefore to maintain the same dynamics and implement with the same or even more success the three financing agreements under way and the corresponding activities that are even more than las year’s, namely: the Guinea Bissau Bissau Susatainable Energy Workshop, already on May, as a parallel event to the SEforALL Forum; the Conference on Sustainable Energy in Guinea Bissau in early December; a mini-grid training in Guinea-Bissau for all African lusophone countries in the same week as the conference; the Advisory Board meeting on May 3 during the SEforALL Forum; the ALER Open Day in June; and the publication of the national reports of Guinea-Bissau and São Tome and Principe.

Afterwards, the new members of ALER’s Governing Structure were elected, and Ms. Miquelina Menezes was elected President of the Board. Ms. Menezes has collaborated with ALER since its creation, when she was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of FUNAE, Honorary and Founding Member of ALER. Even after retiring from FUNAE, Ms. Menezes maintained her link with ALER as Vice-President of the previous Board, giving an essential support in the implementation of ALER's activities in Mozambique. In her words after the election she said that "the role of the Board will be to coordinate and harmonize the activities of ALER, but in reality ALER needs the support of all, including each of the Members."

Pedro Neves Ferreira, the outgoing President, thanked ALER team and Members and sent his best wishes to the new Board in this task that for him “is both easy and difficult. Difficult because ALER still doesn’t have an interlocutor at international level, which is expected to be assumed in the future by a CPLP energy network, preventing the Association to implement its coordination role of all lusophone national stakeholders. Easy thanks to the support of ALER staff, the networking and financing agreements already in place, and to the Members that, in addition to financial support, also help to open new doors". He concluded by saying that "This is, therefore, a challenging outlook that the new Board will have to deal with."