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Rural electrification using renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa: «Good Practices Showing the Way»

In brief

The “PROVEN in rural Africa” programme, an initiative by the Foundation Energies pour le Monde (Energies for the World Foundation) and the Free Energy Foundation (Netherlands) with which the ARENE (Regional Agency for Environmental Energy) is associated, is supported by the European Commission as part of its COOPENER programme and the ADEME (French Agency for Environment and Energy Management. It is part of the partnership convention which was signed between the Foundation and the ARENE in 2006.

This programme running over a period of two years (2006-2008), deals with three distinct issues:

• an exchange of information about decentralised rural electrification operations (ERD) using renewable energies which have proven to be adaptable and sustainable;
• the creation and diffusion of learning tools for the various players in the provision of access to electricity services in rural areas;
• the training and information exchanges involved in: knowing “how”, “what” and “when” as well as “if” between the various players.

It consisted of researching a list of projects or operations for rural electrification which used renewable energies; and selecting the one which was the most representative, and the most successful across six countries, three in West Africa (Burkina-Faso, Mali and Senegal), three in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania).

Four selection criteria were chosen:

• the durability of the electricity service in terms of its consumers;
• the impact of the electricity;
• the reproducibility of the operation;
• the efficiency of the method of implementation.

Six areas of good practice were selected.
These are described in the booklet “Good Practices Showing the Way”.

Note : the ARENE’s involvement in this study of projects and operations was limited to the West African sector (Burkina-Faso, Mali and Senegal). These countries represent an important area of decentralised co-operations lead by several French territorial collectivities, in particular the Region of Ile-de-France.

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