The aim of the plan is to provide an overview of the capacity building programme. It will be a single document resulting from the capacity and skills needs assessment on energy use in partner cities with all relevant stakeholders presenting a sound and tailored learning plan. The capacity plan will outline the learning topics/themes, the sequence, location and timing of training, capacity and skills building activities; the implementation of which will result capacity building, city-to-city cooperation and professional development

Executive summary

The Capacity Building Plan, developed through Smart Energy Solutions For Africa (SESA) project, intends to assist the SESA project and its partners and the local communities engaged to strategically identify capacity and skills development topics, methods and tools to support a further uptake of sustainable energy use in selected urban and rural areas in Africa known as “Living Laboratories” (“Living Labs” in short). The project Living labs are real-life test beds for innovative energy solutions, which will enable the project to experiment in different environments. The urban and rural areas under discussion are as follows: Kisumu and Homabay, Kenya (Demonstration Living Lab); Ga North Municipal Assembly and Atwima Nwabiagya, Ghana (Validation Living Lab); Alicedale, South Africa (Validation Living lab); Rural areas, Malawi (Validation Living Lab) and lastly, Marrakech, Morocco (Validation Living lab).

The Capacity Building Plan is informed by comprehensive capacity and skills needs assessments on energy use undertaken in five Living Lab countries mentioned above. The needs assessments for Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco and South Africa will use qualitative research methods to 1) Assess the present capacity of local innovators and authorities on Sustainable Energy Development 2) Understanding the future capacity (desired state) based on the city’s vision for the Sustainable Energy Use, 3) Identifying gaps between present capacity and future desired skills, and 4) Selecting tools and training modules to fill these gaps.

This Capacity Building Plan consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the Capacity Building Plan and its position. Chapter 2 describes the methodology used to develop the capacity needs and assessment and therefore the Capacity Building Plan, including the research methods, ethical consideration and limitations. This is followed by the capacity and skills needs assessments for Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Morocco and South Africa in Chapter 3. The capacity and skills needs assessments for each country in Chapter 3 details the following: an overview of the country context and background; SESA’s Living Lab project sites in the country; The countries energy governance structure; the various policies, plans and strategies that are relevant to the country’s energy landscape; the present capacity of local innovators and authorities on sustainable energy development; the future capacity (desired state) based on the Living Lab’s city vision for the sustainable energy use; the gaps between present capacity and future desired skills identified; and the relevant tools and training modules to fill the gaps. Chapter 4. outlines the next steps to be undertaken for the Capacity Building Plan as well as the timelines for these steps. The concluding remarks together with some recommendation are provided in Chapter 5.

The scalable and harmonised toolbox will be the key living repository of the project collecting the main outcomes and results produced by the SESA project across the different WPs. The toolbox launch is intended to build a structure of regular iterative updates from various Work Packages through the course of the project.

Executive summary

SESA – Smart Energy Solutions for Africa is a collaborative project between the European Union and nine African countries that aims at providing innovative energy solutions using decentralised renewables.

This report describes the energy efficient toolbox that has been developed in work package 1 of the SESA project and is continuously updated. Although the toolbox falls in the work package 1, it is intrinsically linked to many activities that are undertaken by all partners within other work packages and are expected to provide valuable insights, tools and other relevant output. Content developed in other work packages will be included (or adapted) to be made available in the Toolbox.

The Toolbox is envisioned to be a legacy outcome of the SESA project that can support the development of energy efficient solutions beyond the scope of the project.

This report explains the process that has been put in place to manage and monitor the identification and development progress of content for the Toolbox as well as the design and functionalities of the Toolbox itself. The process aims to minimize complexity, such as the need for all partners to have a sufficient level of technical knowledge of WordPress, while still taking into consideration the need to have checks in place regarding quality, completeness, GDPR and/or sensitive data etc. It allows for all work packages and partners to be involved in (or informed about) the development of content and helps as an additional trigger to identify new and valuable content for the Toolbox. The description of the design and functionalities of the Toolbox ensures the project also has documentation of its more technical details.

Finally, the report also includes a section which provides a summary overview of the content published in the Toolbox for each ‘update’ moment, which take place in months 12, 18 and 40 of the project’s lifespan, as defined in the Grant Agreement for the SESA project.