Renewable energy partnership

A regional partnership ensures the renewable energies sectors can be developed in East Africa. Decentralised supply solutions create new prospects for the rural population and small business.

The vocational training centres of the Bayerischen Wirtschaft (bfz) is collaborating in a joint partnership project with five East African energy associations in the countries Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. By strengthening the national associations, the project is promoting targeted activities for spreading the use of renewable energies. It is also spurring on development of the best possible procedures, training courses as well as dialogue with public and private parties in the five East African countries.

Renewable energies play a key role

Large swathes of the rural population can only gain access to energy through renewable energies. Without them, production or cooled storage, let alone value creation in general, would hardly be possible. Moreover, renewable energies help ensure supply security upon failure of the central networks, which nevertheless only cover a small part of the rural area.

For the rural population and small business sector, the provision of renewable energies spread over various locations from sustainable sources (solar, wind, biogas or hydroelectric) plays an important role in the production and processing of agricultural product such as coffee or tea, but also foods like cassava flour or fruit. 

Meaning of cooperation

The development of services oriented to requirements among the associations aims to promote members (the majority small and micro companies) while developing the entire sector for renewable energies in Kenya.

An additional important component involves encouraging regional exchange along with cooperation between participating countries and associations. Above all work topics here involvethe dismantling of trade restrictions and the introduction of quality standards for imported technical components.

The bfz supports the associations of the renewable energies (EE) active nationwide in their institutional development, to provide full-time and voluntary training (via training courses, workshops etc.), establish joint services for the member companies and realise campaigns for publicity work. The associations strengthen the renewable energies sector and hence its member companies that promote the use of renewable energies. This also allows the rural population to gain access to energy. Regional exchange between the countries participating in the project so as to ensure smooth operations is important too.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is funding the project via the sequa gGmbH. It will run from October 2015 until September 2021.

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