Water and Energy Project for the Increase of Food Security and Socioeconomic Development. Promoting Clean Cooking Solutions and Solar Technologies.

1. CONTEXT / BACKGROUND

The ECOWAS region continues to face interrelated challenges of energy access, energy security and climate change mitigation and adaptation, which are intertwined with the region’s economic development. Rural electrification rates in some countries are below 10%, and overall electrification rates account only to 56% (2022). These energy challenges are impacting negatively on the implementation of regional programmes and strategies aimed at fostering socio-economic development, attracting foreign investment, providing basic social services, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG7) goals.

Most of the region countries’ economies are predominantly dependent on the agricultural sector, which contributes considerably towards their GDPs and employ at 70% of the total population while over 80% of the rural population depend mainly on small-scale subsistence farming as their main source for sustenance and revenues. The agricultural sector is however, characterized by low productivity owing to the fact it is mostly rain-fed, thus highly subject to adverse impacts of climate change such as erratic rainy seasons, variable rainfalls, floods, droughts, bush fires and other extreme events. This situation has been even aggravated by the current rising prices of food due to the Ukraine – Russia war.

The Water and Energy for Food (WE4F) Grand Challenge was announced at the World Water Week 2018 and launched at Social Capital Markets 2019. Energy supply, water availability and food security are intricately connected and must be addressed in a holistic approach. It is in this backdrop that the project entitled Water and Energy for Increased food Security and Socio-Economic Development was launched, which aims to promote the adoption of solar photovoltaic technologies to produce clean energy and utilise it to pump water for agricultural purposes in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, The Gambia. This will be done alongside the promotion of clean cooking solutions in schools and health facilities as well as clean and efficient fish smoking for integrated community development.

Therefore, this project will build the resilience of communities involved in agriculture, fishing and livestock with energy solutions such as solar water pumps, cold chains (conservation), institutional cookstoves etc. The project will mainly target women and youth who will constitute more (80%) of its beneficiaries.

2. MAIN ACTIVITIES & IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

The expected objectives of the project are:

• Increase food production along the value chain through a more sustainable and efficient usage of water and/or energy.
• Increase income for base of the pyramid women and men in both rural and urban areas.
• Sustainably scale innovators’ solutions to meet the challenges in the WE4F nexus.
• Promote climate and environmental resilience and biodiversity through the sustainable, holistic management of natural resources and ecosystems.
• Link clean and renewable energy to water conservation and increased food production, for instance, in the Small Island Developing State of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean which has a food import dependency of over 75% and The Gambia on the west coast of Africa.

The main expected direct results from the implementation of the project are:

• Provision of clean water for agricultural production (establishment of i.e. 6 solar water pumping projects)
• Provision of industrial type of fish smoking facilities to facilitate preservation of fresh fish.
• Provision of PV plants to feed ice cubing machines for preservation of fresh fish.
• Provision of improved institutional cookstoves for schools / hospitals.
• Awareness-raising workshop are held to sensitize on alternative energy, energy efficiency (clean cooking).
• Communication materials (1 video and other communication items ) on the project for scale-up and replication.

3. ACHIEVED OUTPUTS (If the project is ongoing)

• Presentation of the project to NFI’s to get buy-in and to discuss about the next steps
• Technical Expert hired to support implementation
• Preparation underway to secure the services of consultant to conduct the baseline survey.