Communities of practice

The objective of the SESA communities of practice (CoPs) is to bring together consortium members and partners working on similar topics regarding sustainable energy development in Africa to enhance knowledge exchange.

SESA Communities of practice are organised under three topics:

Solar energy

Kenya (test), Ghana (validation), South Africa (validation), Morocco (validation), Namibia (replication), Tanzania (replication), Nigeria (replication), Rwanda (replication)

Clean cooking & Waste to energy

Ghana (validation), Malawi (validation), Rwanda (replication)

E-mobility

The purpose of the CoPs is to continuously promote the thematic area, facilitate sharing of practices among countries and cities, connect projects with experts, provide information through publishing documentation (presentations, research, market insights and case studies) and provide a virtual forum where consortium members can share project progress and best practices, and therefore provide opportunities to showcase these as part of the sixth component of SESA, aiming to disseminate project progress.

The CoP will collect best practices and tools developed under SESA and disseminate these among the countries in the region.
This will help countries to increase confidence into developing sustainable energy solutions, through:

Peer-to-peer exchange on lessons learnt through pilot projects

Formal & informal dialogues between various projects to facilitate spill-over of knowledge

Networking with other related initiatives in the region

Facilitate scale-up and replication of projects in other countries across Africa

Develop policies, business models and financial schemes

Strengthen capacities for the implementation of sustainable energy projects in Africa

Ongoing tasks of the CoPs

  • Filtering — Organising and managing important information
  • Amplifying — Helping to understand important but little known information
  • Providing — Offering a means to give members the resources they need
  • Convening — Bringing together different individuals or groups
  • Community building — Promoting and sustaining values and standards
  • Learning — Helping to share knowledge and work more efficiently and effectively

UNEP Sustainable Mobility Unit (UNEP SMU) has established CoP 3 on e-mobility and batteries.

Under its Global Electric Mobility Programme, the Africa Support and Investment Platform convenes key players on e-mobility on the continent, offers capacity building and disseminates knowledge products on everything related e-mobility. It gathers and adapts knowledge developed by the Programmes Global Thematic Working for use by local decision-makers in governments and in private sector to prepare for the introduction and scale-up of electric mobility. This is being done in close cooperation with other EU funded projects such as Solutions Plus and of course SESA. By including a broad stakeholder group from well established public and private organisations, the CoP is in a position to develop knowledge materials covering a wide range of electric mobility, including vehicle manufacturing, charging, and electricity vehicle battery design (including the sourcing of raw materials as well as the re-use, recycling and sound disposal of used batteries).

All knowledge products developed are publicly and freely accessible through an on-line toolbox (emobility.tools). The dissemination of the products of the Platform and Working groups to the SESA projects will take place through technical support, capacity building and training activities that will be organised by the CoP. All SESA partners are invited to participate in these events.

Preparations on the establishment of CoP 1 and 2 to be led by the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center (UNEP CCC) are ongoing.

Point of contact for CoP 3:
Annika.berlin@un.org

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