The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) has called for proposals to support the creation of an enabling policy and market environment for green mini-grids (GMGs) in an effort to address barriers to growth and unlock private investment in the sector.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, unreliable electricity is estimated to cost countries between one and two percent of annual GDP and this adversely affects over 620 million people.Green mini-grids
GMGs – isolated electricity distribution networks powered either fully or partially by renewable energy – typically offer a lower-cost solution than grid extension for communities too distant from the grid to be economically connected in the near future, but densely populated enough to offer economies of scale in power delivery compared to individual home systems. GMGs are therefore increasingly recognised as an essential part of a comprehensive strategy to achieve universal energy access.SEFA providing $5 million for development
With this in mind, SEFA is providing $5 million to support enabling environment interventions in six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.Selected projects will address sector planning, regulatory and policy interventions, as well as market development work at the country level, and are expected to address the constraints faced by governments, financiers, developers and communities.
Mainly targeted at public sector institutions, the proposals will identify countries eligible for financial support and determine project design and implementation. Proposals will be evaluated based upon criteria such as recipient’s ownership, commitment and alignment with the country’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Action Agenda, existing sector policy, institutional capacity and market potential, and relevance and specificity of required technical support. Interested applicants are requested to submit an expression of interest to the SE4All Africa Hub at the following email address SE4All.Africa@afdb.org before July 1, 2015. Detailed information can be found on the SEFA homepage.
