Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker headed on Thursday for Tanzania's Arusha city to attend the 12th ministerial meeting of the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP).

In a press release on Thursday, the Electricity Ministry said Egypt's participation in the conference underlines keenness on supporting development projects in eastern Africa.

The statement highlighted the importance of promoting cooperation with eastern African states.

Shaker noted that EAPP is meant to secure eastern Africa's needs of electricity and reducing cost of electricity production through a power linkage system.

The minister added the EAPP is also meant to boost power exchange among eastern African states. 

The EAPP was established in 2005 with the signing of an Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding (IGMOU) by seven Eastern Africa countries; namely: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan. In further development, EAPP was adopted as a specialized institution to foster power system interconnectivity by the heads of states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region. Tanzania, Libya and Uganda have joined EAPP in March 2010, February 2011 and December 2012 respectively.

The EAPP main objective is the optimum development of energy resources in the region and to ease the access to electricity power supply to all people of the countries in the Eastern Africa Region through the regional power interconnections.

Source: MENA