Capacity building forms a vital part of successful and sustainable climate action projects and initiatives in Africa. Understanding the context-specific capacity gaps and needs in an area can shed light on the most suitable route to take to build capacity and, in turn, ramp up the success of a project. For this reason, capacity needs assessments and capacity building planning activities are embedded in the Sustainable Energy Solutions for Africa (SESA) project.  

The SESA project works to increase energy access in Africa, supporting the uptake of scalable and replicable energy access innovations that are co-developed with in-country living labs, tested, validated, and later replicated further.

The project has taken a unique and value-adding approach to capacity development as an integral part of the project. Following extensive desktop research, interviews and focus group discussions with various government officials, civil society stakeholders and SESA project partners working in the selected sites, the team is proud to announce that a SESA capacity building plan has been developed and completed.

Following comprehensive skills needs assessment on energy use conducted with representatives from both the public and private sectors, the SESA capacity building plan led by ICLEI Africa, unpacks present and future knowledge needs in the SESA project demonstration and validation site countries, namely Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, Morocco and South Africa. The document capture the current capacity of the actors in the sites in supporting innovative, sustainable energy access interventions, it pinpoint the stakeholders’ desired capacity and identify the gaps in relation to sustainable energy solutions foreseen. In addition, and most importantly, the capacity building plan highlights the possible tools and resources that could be developed and/or utilised to address the capacity gaps and needs identified.

Despite some differences across countries, a common element is the strong need to raise awareness on the benefit and functioning of the different RES solutions. This is particularly important for the end users and people in the local communities where those are implemented, but also at the administrative and political level in the same areas. In all cases the delivery of materials in the local language has been indicates as mandatory in order to reach out to the local communities.

The results of this extensive work are the building blocks of the capacity-building programme, which starting from fall 2022, will dive into all the sustainable energy solutions planned in SESA, breaking down the topics into easier-to-digest small units that will be regularly published online for self-paced learning. This modular package of capacity-building tools and methodologies will be easily accessible on the SESA website and also featured at local InfoSpots, as well as collected and integrated in the SESA toolbox.

Thanks to its comprehensive outlook, the context-specific capacity building tools identified in the plan are a key piece of information that will inform not only the development of the learning tools, in a more impactful capacity building programme, but it will also guide the activities foreseen in the next years with regard to policy and business analysis.

In addition to the energy-access solutions being developed and implemented at the living-lab sites themselves, the SESA Toolbox is one of the key outputs of the SESA project. It is not only a ‘deliverable’ by itself, but more importantly, its content will reflect the insights and learnings from many of the activities that will be undertaken by the many collaborating SESA partners. The toolbox will therefore contain information that is collected and created by all partners during the project’s development, implementation, and use of the solutions across the demonstration and validation sites.

The purpose of the Toolbox is to share these insights and learnings in ways that will help others, be they policy makers or local community members, embark on similar journeys. We are happy to announce that, with the project, we have achieved a first milestone for the SESA Toolbox. The preliminary version of the Toolbox is now online. This means that, under coordination of ICLEI World Secretariat and Cenex NL, and based on input from multiple SESA partners, the functional requirements and design was developed. In collaboration with dissemination partner F6S, it has now been launched as the (preliminary) version of the Toolbox.

The website-based Toolbox has seven main categories: Agriculture, Economics, Energy, Environmental, IT, Mobility, and Social. It allows visitors and users of the Toolbox to search content
by filtering down through these main categories. Further fine-tuning or alternative search for topic specific content can be and filtered down using additional filter selections. This will facilitate users finding the desired information quickly and easily. Each item displayed in the search results will have a description of what it is about and include documents, catalogues, tools, videos, or any additional material that is relevant. Individual items will be made available for download where possible.

The SESA Toolbox is currently online and available for partners and over the course of the next few months will be populated with first collection of ‘content material’. We will also use this time to test its functionalities on a broader level with the partners and make some adjustments if useful. After which the Toolbox will be made available for everyone.

In addition, the SESA project is also looking for ways to make the content in the SESA Toolbox also available via Info-spots technology. This solution is dedicated to address issues of making (digital) information and knowledge available and accessible for people in areas with limited connectivity- access for technical or economic reasons. Be sure to keep an eye out for further updates on these next steps for the SESA Toolbox in the SESA newsletter, website and social media posts!

The past 29th June we had the pleasure to host our first session at World Urban Forum Eleventh Session in Katowice (Poland).  Building sustainable, secure and resilient energy systems at scale through local action gathered speakers from the SESA consortium and guests actively working on the topic.

The moderation was in charge of SESA coordinator Giorgia Rambelli, Coordinator Climate Policy and Energy Governance, ICLEI European Secretariat; Lea Ranalder, Associate Programme Management Officer, UN-Habitat; Rana Adib, Executive Director, REN21; Rohit Sen, Head, Sustainable Energy ICLEI World Secretariat; Joseph Oganga, Chief Officer Department of Energy and Industrialisation, Kisumu County, Kenya; And, Dr. Oliver Lah,  Head of Research Unit Mobility and International Cooperation, Energy, Transport and Climate Policy , Professor at Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.

Speakers discussed technologies and solutions for sustainable energy systems, with the goal of accelerating energy access and increasing resilience to climate change. We present you with some highlights from our session to reflect about the actions we must take to ensure that innovative local energy solutions can be accessed by communities in order to guarantee their social and economic development.

Lea Ranadler

We need a reality check. We have made great progress when it comes to SDG 7, but are not on track to reach the 2030 goals. We have made barely any progress on renewable energy in the last 10 years. Energy demand has expanded in the past few years.We are actually have record numbers of coal when it comes to electricity consumption. The coal phase out we were discussing at COP is not happening and it is the vulnerable and poor who will be hit the most. The good news is that cities as be key actors in the energy transition are taking action. They are procuring renewables for energy consumption, improving public transport, pooling their resources, building coeds, and using both their regulatory and their facilitatory potential to bring about change.

Rana Adlib

150 countries are subsidising fossil fuels. We are spending 11.000 dollars per minute on fossil fuels. There are much more opportunities to use renewables and they have much more potential than we think, but we are creating market rules, that not allow us to thrive on those opportunities. Renewables allow citizens and city governments to not only be energy consumers, but also energy producers. Yet, the reality is that only 9% of cities over 250.000 inhabitants have net zero targets.

Oliver Lah

On practical day to day to level, we need to bring many actors together, including the business sector.For example, when we talk about. developments for e-mobility, we need to have integration between mobility and energy systems and combine business solutions for mobility and energy access, through capacity building. It#s a long journey. There are a few project, like SESA, through which we are creating a viability check. These are reference points for further scaling up. We see that there is potential to graduate to next level by engaging the private sector and leveraging as much as possible what is already on the ground.

Rohit Sen

When we talk about technological solutions, it is important to understand that while access to technology is not evenly divided across the world, technology is evolving. For example, solar panels have evolved from being heavy structures, to being flexible. We don’t know how the technology is going to be in 2030, it might be better or more efficient. We do know that cities need to work together with all stakeholders, and also focus on citizens and behavioural change. We cannot expect that if we build cycling paths in New Delhi or Dhaka, they will be used in the same way as in Europe. We need to take citizen behaviour into account.