Promoting Equitable Access to Clean Energy (PEACE) Project Officer, Kondwani Mubisa, says only less than 20 percent of Malawians access electricity and, therefore, adopting the technologies is a best way to go.

He was speaking in Blantyre on Friday during the district level engagement meeting where stakeholders demonstrated and raised awareness of how they can use the existing technologies.

“This project is being financed by the European Union and part of it is to draw discussions on the challenges that people are facing to access sustainable energy. We are glad that government was here to address some of these challenges through various programmes through the National Energy Policy,” he said.

Principal economist in the ministry of energy, James Namalima, said that it is the government’s policy that everybody should have access to energy by 2030.

“If we can achieve that earlier, the better because the issue of poverty is leaving a lot of people behind. It is making Malawi to fail to achieve the aspirations of the medium term implementation plan of the Malawi 2063 vision.

“Energy being a catalyst of socio-economic development, it is important that all the stakeholders should join hands so that we can reach out to everybody and make sure that all the people have got the access to energy,” he said.

Some of the notable challenges hindering people from accessing clean energy is high electricity tariff and liquefied petroleum and gas and low electricity connection.