In Summary:
- Augustus Goanue, Managing Director of the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission, claimed that the country’s ranking in the Electricity Regulatory Index has improved from 43 to 10.
- Mr. Goanue was stressing the progress his management has achieved
- We have fact-checked the claim by reviewing Africa’s electricity regulatory index and found his statement partially incorrect
On November 5, Mr. Augustus Goanue, Managing Director of the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission, appeared at a Ministry of Information press briefing and claimed that Liberia was ranked 43rd at the bottom of the Electricity Regulatory Index but the country is now ranked 10th.
Mr. Goanue made the claim at 1:36:29 of the 1:45:56 Facebook live video while highlighting the progress made by the Commission under his management. He has served as Managing Director since April 2019, according to his LinkedIn account.
The Electricity Law of 2015 established the LERC and authorizes the Commission to regulate all activities in Liberia’s electricity sector.
The Electricity Regulatory Index Africa (ERI) is produced by the Power, Energy, Climate Change, and Green Growth Complex of the African Development Bank.
Since its launch in 2018, ERI has highlighted aspects of electricity regulation that need reform, identified appropriate areas for intervention, and encouraged stakeholders to be proactive in addressing challenges. The index is widely adopted by regulators and other stakeholders across the continent as a benchmark for the regulatory environment as well as for ongoing reforms.
The Claim
Said Mr. Goanue: “We started with the African Development Bank Electricity Regulatory Index for Africa, Liberia was 43 at the bottom, and now we are at number 10 in Africa because of the level of transparency we exhibited and how we work”.
Watch the claim here:
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we reviewed the ERI reports published since its inception in 2018. The first ERI report released in 2018 covered 15 countries which did not include Liberia.
In 2019, Liberia was among the countries the report covered. Liberia was then ranked 34th out of 34 countries in the ERI Report.
In 2020, Liberia was ranked 31st out of 36 countries in the index. For 2021, Liberia was ranked 37th out of 43 countries in Africa the index covered.
In 2022, the African Development Bank released the fifth edition of the Electricity Regulatory Index in which Liberia was ranked at spot number 10 among 43 countries in Africa.
The 2023 report has not been published as of the date of the publication of this fact-check report.
Conclusion
Based on this, we conclude that the claim made by Mr. Goanue, Managing Director of LERC, that Liberia is currently ranked 10 in the African Development Bank Electricity Regulator Index is correct.
On the other hand, he is incorrect about Liberia being ranked 43rd. All of the index reports show that some of Liberia’s lowest rankings by the ERI were 34th in 2019, 31st in 2020, and 37th in 2021. Our review of all the reports shows that Liberia has not been ranked 43rd as was claimed by Mr. Goanue.
