Overview

The World Bank and ECREEE have designed the Regional Off-Grid Electrification Project (ROGEP) to increase access to sustainable electricity services in the ECOWAS region and 4 Sahel countries for household, commercial enterprises and public facilities.

Up to 174.5 million ECOWAS citizens had no access to electricity in 2016; 77 percent of them live in rural areas. Energy is of strategic importance in achieving sustainable development and poverty reduction.

This project targets 15 ECOWAS countries and 4 Sahel countries to focus on mobilizing private investment with a market based approach. The regional approach allows experiences exchange, harmonization of an attractive and sizeable market, and supporting relatively small countries to benefit too. The project aims to seek synergies with already on-going initiatives. The use of the different instruments of ROGEP by the countries will depend on the interest, enabling environment and market situation in each of them.

Components

Component 1:Technical Assistance to improve off grid market ecosystem for female and male entrepreneurs

These Technical Assistance activities are to improve conditions for investment and attract local and international companies to the business in a harmonized regional market. This includes to a gender - responsive ecosystem for electrification activities and regional market harmonization i.e. Technical standards, trade conditions and import duties.

Activities within this component will precede the other activities in the project and will be provided to all the project countries in parallel. Technical assistance (TA) activities include

• regulatory support ,
• private sector support facility that will support the start - up and growth of entrepreneurial solar firms
• market assessment studies, identification of barriers towards a regional harmonized market of solar products,
• development of private sector facilities,
• seed funding support to start - ups with good potential,
• attracting impact investors through matching grant schemes,
• developing a guarantee fund to mitigate the risk exposure of commercial banks to lend in new companies in the solar space and to mitigate the payment risk exposure from public institutions to the private service providers.

Component 2: Electrification of Households and Commercial Enterprises

This component will support electrification with standalone solar systems, targeting a key constraint: access to finance. This will be provided by means of one or more credit lines from the World Bank through selected Financial Institutions (FIs) in collaboration with the PIU. The FIs may include development banks, commercial banks, debt funds, leasing companies and micro - finance institutions.

The credit lines will provide working capital and receivables financing to project developers (private sector enterprises - PSEs, small and 3 medium enterprises (SMEs) and productive end - users of solar power.) This facility will address key financing challenges such as lack of liquidity in the financial sector, lack of funding in local currency and foreign exchange, and limited capacity to provide collateral.

Furthermore, to ensure th at the project promotes women’s entrepreneurship development, where feasible, credit will be provided to women - led energy enterprises or energy businesses that have specific goals of improving women’s income generation capacity through energy access.

Component 3: Support service providers to electrify Public Institutions.

This component will support electrification of public institutions and community facilities using standalone solar systems. The total number of public institutions electrified under the p roject will be determined through multiple factors , including if and how the institutions’ work directly contributes towards poverty eradication, advancing gender equality and women’s economic development as well environmental sustainability. A lifecycle a pproach to electrification will be followed so that the program considers costs and service delivery associated not only with the initial installation, but also with ongoing operations, maintenance and equipment replacement. The sustainability of the project, particularly in terms of budgetary provisions beyond the life of the project, should be addressed to avoid stranded or failed systems.

Activities, Updates, Results

November 2017

A national workshop about ROGEP was held with various stakeholders. Various stakeholders learned about ROGEP and discussed the current situation in Liberia and ways forward for renewable off-grid solutions in Liberia. Opportunities and challenges were shared between representatives from financial institutions and renewable energy businesses and consultants, as well as government agencies and donor representatives

Read more:
Regional Off-Grid Electrification Project (ECREEE) holds National Workshop (Renewables Liberia)

Liberia to Benefit From Regional Off-grid Electrification Project (Frontpage)

June 2018

GreenMax Capital Advisors from USA are tasked to organize assessments in different countries. For Liberia, they contracted Nathan Reeves as consultant who facilitated various focus groups, consulting stakeholders to inform about current situation and ideas for improvement of off-grid solar systems in public institutions, private households, for productive use and agriculture.