The Smart Villages workshop to be organised in Pakistan is a continuation of the regional engagement in South Asia. The Pakistan workshop aims to glean insights from the country’s experience of off-grid energy provision to remote rural communities through the deployment of micro-grids. In particular the workshop aims to tease out the enabling framework conditions that have been vital for the deployment of micro-grids in remote areas of the country. It is envisaged that the workshop will provide relevant insights to other countries in South Asia and globally that seek to establish frameworks supporting the growth of micro-grids.
The workshop will address the following main questions:
- What are the challenges encountered in deploying micro-grids in Pakistan and how have they been overcome?
- What framework conditions have acted as enablers or have hindered the success of micro-grids in Pakistan?
- How have these framework conditions evolved and what are the lessons for other regions that seek to deploy micro-grids?
- How can these framework conditions enable the productive use of energy to improve livelihoods, health and education outcomes?
This workshop is envisaged as a day-long event and will involve 35 to 40 participants. We aim to draw participants from a wide cross-section of individuals and organisations involved in off-grid energy provision in rural areas in Pakistan. These include: academics and researchers, rural service providers including entrepreneurs and agencies, NGOs, financiers, donors (multilateral and bilateral), community representatives, regulators and policy makers. The conference organisers will draw on the insights and debate generated during the workshop to inform the drafting of a detailed report. This report will be widely distributed to a number of stakeholders through the network of the Smart Villages Initiative (SVI) in developing countries as well as at multilateral forums including the European Union and the United Nations. It will also feed into the final report on the regional engagement of the SVI in South Asia.
The workshop will be organised in Islamabad on the 6th of October 2015. The Smart Villages workshop in Pakistan is being undertaken in collaboration and partnership with the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN), Pakistan.
