As the world moves towards 2030, the deadline of the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Initiative, it is important to review the achievements of the past few years and readjust our path to meet the goal. For this reason, Practical Action together with the Smart Villages Initiative held a one-day regional workshop on rural energy access planning on 20 February 2017 in Lomé, Togo.
The workshop was coupled with the West Africa launch of the 2016 Poor People’s Energy Outlook (PPEO 2016) and was attended by around 50 participants, including policymakers, academia, representatives of the private sector, rural communities’ leaders, media, and civil society. The objective of the workshop was to analyse the potential for community-based approaches to strengthen national energy planning processes in West Africa.
Specifically, the workshop aimed to:
- Share experiences of energy planning processes within the ECOWAS region
- Highlight the importance of planning processes to meet rural energy needs
- Identify the main opportunities and constraints related to planning to meet rural energy needs
- Share findings and lessons learned from a study of energy needs and opportunities in 12 rural communities in Togo, Kenya, and Bangladesh (PPEO 2016)
- Identify key constraints and opportunities for using community-based approaches and the
implications for energy planning processes in West Africa - Formulate recommendations to strengthen energy planning processes to meet SE4ALL
objectives in rural areas of West Africa
The report summarises key points arising from the presentations and discussions.
