The Hub participates to the SEforALL Global Forum

The Sustainable Energy for All Africa Hub, participated to the three days  SEforALL Global Forum held in New York, from 3 to 5 of April 2017 under the theme  “Going Further, faster, together” to attain the SEforALL and SDG7 targets by 2030. The Forum was attended by more than 1000 high level representatives from 110 countries.

The latest data and trends were showcased at over 60 sessions held during the Forum where several products and partnerships were announced.

The Africa Hub organized a Partners’ Working Session (PWS) on the theme “From plans to actions – Africa’s experience in implementing the SEforALL initiative” which was moderated by Dr. Daniel Schroth of the SEforALL Africa Hun with the participation of Mahama Kappiah from ECREEE, Roberto Ridolfi from the European Commission, John Wasielewski from Power Africa, Faruk Yusuf Yabo from the Nigerian Ministry of Energy and Lydia Muchiri from Practical Action as speakers. The session discussed the following topics:

1.  It presented the outcome of the SEforALL Africa Workshop, held in in March 2017, took note on the advancement of SEforALL Action Agendas and Investment Prospectuses in Africa, and discussed the implementation arrangements for SEforALL at the country level, particularly in terms of implementation structures, coordination amongst national and international partners and project development and execution.

2.  It highlighted the mobilization of stakeholders around SEforALL in many African countries, stressed the importance of long-term country engagement, particularly the need for high-level political buy-in and strong country ownership of the vision and priority actions contained in the Action Agendas. It was suggested that country wide coordinated support packages, or country compacts, assuring long-term support to the country linked to clear commitments and flexible enough to respond to changing conditions and needs are likely to yield better results than various standalone projects.

3.  It underscored the importance for countries to put in place, if not already available, appropriate structures to assure the continuous stakeholder engagement, the coordination of activities, the continuous development of IP projects and their follow-up, as well as monitoring, evaluation and reporting.  Such structures, i.e. a secretariat or delivery unit, should be adapted to local conditions and institutional frameworks, linked to the SDG process, and properly staffed and budgeted by the country with eventual additional financial support from development partners.

4.  The session also exchanged on the need for innovative financing instruments to be deployed to increase the involvement of the private sector in Africa’s energy sector and in this regard also underlined the importance of mobilization of African sources of capital.

The African Hub also participated as panelist in five other sessions:

a.  Understanding Traditional Biomass | addressing the data challenge in Africa, organized by SEforALL biomass accelerator;

b.  Overcoming the barriers to clean energy mini-grid deployment, organized by EDP;

c.  Delivering Sustainable Energy in a Changing Climate, organized by UNDP;

d.  Partnerships to integrate energy resources and last-mile access for income generation organized by Columbia University.

e.  Finance flows for energy access: are the right levels of finance flowing? Organized by SEforALL.

The SEforALL coordinator Daniel Schroth appeared in a Facebook live event with Jane Olga Ebinger, Policy director of SEforALL, and Faruk Yusuf, SEforALL focal point for Nigeria.