The Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) process in Malawi is slowly getting into gear. After the first kick-off meeting in 2013 supported by UNDP, Scottish Government and other donors to make stakeholders aware about the SE4All initiative and emphasize the role of private sector and civil society in the process, as well as the Renewable Energy Symposium in August 2015 where SE4All was one of the focus topics, another important gathering is currently taking place at SilverSands Lodge in Salima.
The consultant team of Econoler and Deloitte, currently developing the National Action Agenda (AA) and Investment Prospectus (IP), organized a well attended stakeholder consultation meeting.
The Action Agenda is supposed to determine how the 3 goals of SE4All can be reached by 2030 in the national context and to develop a long-term vision and support coherence and synergies for an inclusive strategy, while including nexus angles with other sectors like health and education. The Investment Prospectus shall provide an approach to operationalize the Action Agenda. It will draw a rather mid-term overview of investment opportunities for a 3-5 year window and provide prelimianry information to prospective investors. With the development of these core documents, Malawi would join other African countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda who are already in advanced stages in their SE4All processes.
On the first day of the event, the around 70 participants from the Department of Energy, MERA, private sector suppliers and installers of energy, some NGOs and representatives of wider stakeholder networks like REIAMA, NCSC CONREMA and MBAULA, were presented with updates on the ongoing national SE4All initiative design process, including the updated Rapid Assessment and Gap Analysis of the Malawi Energy Sector, the AA and the IP. Moreover, the last results and observation from the ongoing National Enegry Policy review exercise were shared by the lead consultant of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
The afternoon and following morning will see thematic working groups to analyse objectives and challenges and propose interventions around four topical areas:
1) Energy Access
2) Renewable Energy
3) Energy Efficiency
4) Transportation
The programme will be complemented by a short presentation on the current activities of the SE4All Malawi CSO Working Group to engage with stakeholders to share information on energy poverty impacts and the need to get involved in the SE4All initiative, as well as the current activities of the National Cookstove Steering Committee and the MBAULA network towards achieving the national cookstove target of 2 mio stoves by 2020.
The presentations will shortly be shared in this post for download.