West Africa is in need of 52 billion US dollars investment to achieve sustainable energy access within the sub-region in the next 10 years, a sub-regional committee has said.

The committee on energy access, which was set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic Monetary Union, said in a white paper that the funds would be sourced from national budgets and development partners, Nigeria's This Day newspaper reported Thursday.

Among the key targets set out by the committee at the end of a meeting relevant to the matter held in Ghana this week is a projection that 54 million households within west Africa or 100 percent of the total population are to have access to modern cooking energy by 2015.

It also proposed that at least 60 percent of the people living in rural areas are to have access to motive power while at least 66 percent of population in rural and semi-urban areas should have access to electricity supplies.

The white paper also contained regional action plan structured around four key areas: capacity building of public and private actors, sourcing loans and finance from private sector for projects, and promotion of local production of energy goods and services.

The report said energy ministers in the ECOWAS countries adopted the white paper as prepared by the regional multi-sectoral committee for onward approval of the heads of state.

The committee was set up after the "Bamako Forum" in May 2005 with the mandate to steer and guide nation states in the region on increasing access to energy services in the rural and semi-urban areas as a means of eradicating poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Source: Xinhua