The bilateral collaboration project
between the Belgian and Mozambican government “Development of Capacity within the
Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME) and the new regulator ARENE”,
faces a persistent lack of qualified human resources in MIREME for energy data
collection and analysis.
It is in this context that in early 2020, five young national
university graduates were recruited through Enabel as temporary ‘Energy Data Management
Assistants’ to be based in and supervised by MIREME. They were to support MIREME’s
planning staff in areas such as surveys, energy balances, demand projections,
and energy supply and trade scenarios.
So far, these assistants have visited
state-related institutions, developed and presented a proposal for the National
Energy Balance, supported MIREME’s Statistics Department, and collected long-outstanding
energy data. The publication of the last official energy data dates a decade
back, and the assistants provide key support towards collecting and publishing
the information for the period 2010-2020, together with the National Institute
for Statistics (INE).
Problems and proposed solutions
After the resignation of two of the five assistants, Enabel sought external advice through an interim
evaluation of the additional human support programme from Prof.B.Cuamba, an
energy expert of the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. The main findings are that although the
assistants have contributed to improve the data collection and analysis
potential within MIREME, they do not operate under clear enough professional guidance.
Prof.B.Cuamba formulates therefore the following recommendations:
- Provide a clear role and task description,
incentives in terms of title and remuneration, and identify future
opportunities within MIREME to give a long-term perspective to the assistants;
- Provide the assistants with further training
on the energy sector. This should include certain conditions, such as staying
within MIREME for the next 2 years;
- Establish regular meetings (e.g. weekly)
between the assistants and relevant MIREME staff, in which the assistants share
their continuously evolving knowledge on energy data with the staff and assist
them where needed (using pedagogical tools learned during training);
- Assign a mentor/ supervisor for each assistant, who can follow-up on
their work and make sure they are going into the right direction. This can also
be used as an opportunity for the assistant to share doubts, insecurities, etc.
A National Junior Expert approach?
These recommendations fit
remarkably well what we know as the “Junior Expert-approach” of Enabel. This
approach gives the opportunity to young graduates to provide specific quality
services, and grow professionally with their counterparts, while still learning
themselves. Enabel has been using the Junior Expert-approach for years. Junior
Experts are assigned to a specific project and have a clear professional
framework, with a detailed job description and supervision. This transparency
avoids misunderstandings regarding the expectations of both parties and allows
a fruitful collaboration. The philosophy behind this approach is to give the
opportunity to young graduates to acquire new knowledge and skills on a
particular topic, while putting it in practice in their working environment.
This creates a double value for both the junior and the partner organization as
they both enter a beneficial learning process:
- The partner organization receives a continuous
support, contributing directly to its outputs and development;
- The Junior Expert has the opportunity to develop
personally and grow professionally.
Applying a similar approach to
the energy data management assistants of MIREME, will, according to the
consultant, enable the assistants to grow professionally in a well-framed
environment, while contributing to the updating and elaboration of MIREME’s
energy data and statistics.
Conclusion:
Applying the philosophy of the
Enabel Junior Expert Programme to the present unclear working conditions of temporary
junior staff and assistants within MIREME, may not only give them the
opportunity to put in practice acquired knowledge and skills, while MIREME can
benefit in the short run from an updated and improved data base on the energy
sector, validated by the INE.
It also hints at the potential of
developing a larger programme of so-called “National
Junior Experts” to provide a readily available intervention modality for
donors to support capacity strengthening in the public sector and inclusion of
the national youth. Public sector human
resource constraints may thus be turned into programmes of dedicated technical
support, local expertise development, exchange, and even buddying with
International Junior Experts. Like International Junior Experts, these national
young graduates can then after a limited period of deployment, eventually seek
out their own professional trajectories within the public or private energy
sector.
Unfortunately, as of now, such a
programme requires a lot more preparation and mobilization of human resources
for coaching and follow-up than MIREME or ARENE can presently offer. But
the fact that some of these ‘Energy Data Management Assistants’ are writing up
articles at their own initiative on their present work and ideas for the
development of the energy sector through biomass resources, for example, points
out that young university graduates are eager to get a chance to get involved
in the development of their country.
By: Esra Nurja and Evert Waeterloos