Transition to a Clean Energy Circular Economy through the Optimization of High Energy Intensity Value Chains in High Impact Sectors

1.CONTEXT / BACKGROUND

Benin, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, like most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are low-income countries with economies that are heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, livestock and/or fishing, three sectors that are vulnerable to climate change. The strong contribution of the fishing, agriculture and livestock sectors to the economies of the target countries in terms of revenues and jobs creation cannot be overstated.

Fisheries, livestock, farming and agriculture sectors have great importance from a cultural, social and economic standpoint and play a primordial role in the feeding of populations; they are essential for job creation and income generation. In addition, these countries still rely heavily on fuelwood and thermal energy sources to meet their energy needs. Paradoxically, these countries have considerable waste from the three aforementioned key sectors, waste from fisheries, farming and livestock as well as other renewable energy sources such as solar, etc., which can be used to increase revenues of the stakeholders in these values chains and beyond. Therefore, the project will go through a series of interventions that will build the socio-economic resilience of the target population and sectors through a wide range of productive applications such as biogas, briquettes and biochar made from waste to produce energy and biofertilizers in order to increase food production and food security (processing and value-addition). Moreover, innovative and cleaner drying and processing techniques will be introduced in the dairy and horticulture sectors, which are currently characterized by high levels of post-harvest losses/waste.

Moreover, women and youth are highly represented in these sectors and will constitute most (70%) of the project’s beneficiaries.

2. MAIN ACTIVITIES & IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

A summary of the main activities that are planned for the project is:

• Regional Virtual Workshop with the National Focal Institutions to launch the project.
• Baselinestudies and selection of value chains: Desk research, will be conducted leading to the selection of value chains. Stakeholder’s Engagement: National meetings will be organized engaging all relevant stakeholders of the sector in order to provide input into the baseline study and relevant information for the design of the site interventions and site selection.
• Site interventions:
  • Provision of clean energy solutions, i. e. institutional stoves for smoking fish, processing and storing units of milk; conservation/processing unit for horticulture/agriculture products (tomato, onion, potato, mango, cashew, sesame, banana, yam, rice, sorghum, etc.).
  • Provision of clean energy technology production units from waste such as briquettes and biogas i.e. 1 briquette manufacturing factory, biogas units.
  • Capacity building and training for the use of the technologies and fuels adopted.
  • Awareness-raising on alternative energy, energy efficiency.
• Production of communication materials for scale-up and replication. On going projects under the Water, Energy and Food Programme intend to become flagship initiatives and therefore, that its activities can be expanded and replicated.

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