Piloting of Circular Economy through the Water-Energy and Food Nexus in West Africa: Phase 1– Scoping Exercise to Establish the Baseline

1. CONTEXT / BACKGROUND

The reduced generation and distribution of sustainable energy for productive use that is accessible and affordable especially to the most vulnerable population is one the biggest global challenges of our time. Access to energy has the potential to unlock socio-economic development especially through powering social services and productive uses. In the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) access to electricity rate is only 55% ; this seriously impedes any tangible and sustained socio-economic growth. In fact, population growth pushed up the number of people without access to clean cooking energy by 10% to around 940 million in 2020, making sub-Saharan Africa the only region where the number of those without access continues to rise significantly.

A transformational change is therefore needed to close the energy gap, both locally and regionally, to bring about long-lasting systemic socioeconomic growth in the key sectors such as agriculture employing the great majority of the people and contributing high share to the GDP.
The design of this type of game-changing projects requires alignment with national interventions and ambitions to ensure synergies are built, duplication of efforts is avoided, and maximum socio-economic and environmental impacts are achieved, especially in favour of vulnerable populations such as women and youth.

To achieve this, the intended project needs to rely on a deep understanding of the geopolitical dynamics, socio-economic trend, and consensus with the main stakeholders in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Togo. It is in this framework that this phase 1 project is being proposed to support the development of the full proposal on circular economy. The proposed phase 1 project looks to establish the state-of-the-art in terms of interventions around circular economy through an in-depth scoping exercise. Overall, the phase 1 project will establish the baseline in terms of lessons-learned from past projects, synergies with currents projects, needs, energy consumption, appropriate agriculture value-chains, CO2 emissions, etc. in the target countries to inform the subsequent full project, which will then concretely address the energy and capacity gaps in the identified value chains on the installation of distributed renewable energy for productive use.

2. MAIN ACTIVITIES & IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

Phase 1 will focus on determining in a consensual and data-driven manner the four value-chains to be supported/optimized in phase 2 in the selected countries; establishing context; ensuring decisions on the value chains are clear and well-founded. The baseline assessment will involve desk research and stakeholder consultation to determine the predominant sectors, prioritization of the agriculture value chain, calculations of potential energy savings, greenhouse gases emission, socio-economic impacts, key beneficiaries, etc.

The expected results of these consultations are:

• Full project proposal including the four-priority value-chains on socio-economic and climate impact project activities is produced.
• A Quality Assurance and Monitoring Framework for measuring, reporting, and verification of the sustainable development impacts of project, including GHG emission reductions, is adopted and operationalized.

This assessment will be conducted in an inclusive manner to ensure men, women, youth, and other vulnerable populations fully participate in all activities as project beneficiaries, so their voices are heard, and points of views/perspectives are included in the resulting projects and supporting documents.

3. ACHIEVED OUTPUTS (If the project is ongoing)

• NFI’s have been informed about the project and next steps of the project.
• Preparation underway to secure the services of consultancy firm to conduct the baseline survey.