By A.Van de Velde and E.Waeterloos, Enabel Maputo

In September 2018, national and provincial staff of the Mozambican partners Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME), Energy Regulating Authority (ARENE), and the Energy Fund FUNAE retreated with Enabel staff to a quiet venue outside Maputo for a first joint planning exercise.

The support of Enabel to the energy sector in Mozambique dates back to 2010. The first Renewably Energy for Rural Development (RERD) project aimed at increasing access to water, solar and wind energy for off-grid applications in more remote rural areas. In 2017, when this collaboration came to an end, Belgium and Mozambique signed two new energy projects to contribute to the socioeconomic development of the rural areas through access to sustainable, affordable and environment-friendly energy for productive use. The first new project is the second phase of RERD, which aims to further invest in renewable off-grid energy systems and suitable management approaches. The other project envisages specifically to strengthen the capacity of MIREME at national and provincial level and of ARENE.

Belgium is not the only and certainly not the major donor who supports the energy sector in Mozambique. In order to align the various donors’ contributions, Enabel organised in July 2018 a first workshop in collaboration with MIREME and the Energy Sector Working Group, the dialogue platform between donors and government. This workshop reviewed the sector’s challenges and needs, and updated information on donor commitments to stimulate the discussion around complementarity. The information presented was gathered and analysed by Enabel staff. This exercise was a first attempt at clarifying the priority needs and financial flows of MIREME, ARENE and FUNAE for the next years. It will be followed by other updating and coordination meetings within the Energy Sector Working Group. Enabel continues to engage itself as part of the capacity strengthening intervention to MIREME in such sharing of general information and tentative analyses to promote better alignment between donor projects and development support needs.

The EuropeAid Toolkit for Capacity Development of 2010 views capacity development as an internal process of change which takes place within people, organisations or society to unleash, create, adapt, and strengthen their ability to manage their affairs successfully. Such change can take place in different fields such as knowledge, skills, management style, tools, or processes. The most important aspect, however, is that the change needs to happen within the organisations or individuals and needs to be owned by them. An external partner can merely support the process or help to create awareness and incentives for change. Such supportive role is indeed set aside for the Enabel project team. More than in a mere technical cooperation project, strong links and collaboration with the MIREME and ARENE are required to ensure that the process of change is aligned to the country’s agenda and strategy, and fully owned by the government partners. This implies that both cooperation partners need to find a harmonized tune and rhythm to act on. Stepping into the arena to establish the point of departure and seeking synergies in tunes was the objective of the joint planning and baseline workshop which took place from 13 to 14 September 2018.

The workshop brought together staff from MIREME at the central level and from the provinces of Sofala, Manica and Zambezia, from ARENE, FUNAE and Enabel to discuss and update the logical and M&E framework of the capacity building project. Before tackling the update, Enabel’s Evert Waeterloos introduced the concepts of capacity development and Theory of Change (what is change, how to change and why?), as well as an elaborate SWOT analysis of the energy sector in Mozambique. This SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis was compiled from different secondary data sources[1] and supplemented with a CAF assessment to obtain a more profound analysis of the energy sector. CAF stands for the European Union’s Common Assessment Framework for public sector organisations and is a self-assessment and quality management instrument specifically tailored for and developed by the public sector itself.  The CAF model allowed the analysis of the SWOT information according to the following ‘enablers’ or managerial practices of an organisation: leadership, people, strategy and planning, partnerships and resources, and processes[2]. Apart from these five enablers (‘how an organisation does what?’), CAF pays attention to four result-criteria (“what an organisation achieves”): key performance results, citizen or customer oriented results, human resources and social responsibility. Integrating a CAF perspective into the SWOT allows a better identification of the weight and role within the organisation of the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This combined SWOT-CAF analysis provided participants with an overview of the sector and organisations they work in in terms of what is going well?; which aspects will enable change?; what is not working?; which elements need to change?; and which roles are cut out for whom in this? The analysis functioned as a database and a mental reminder during the discussions on updating the logical framework and specification of priorities, activities, targets and stakeholders.

Participants were divided in two discussion groups: one focussing more on a central level perspective, and one on a more provincial one. The topic of the discussion were the three result areas of the project: strengthen the capacity of the central level (MIREME), the provincial level (DIPREME) and the new energy regulator ARENE. The groups were asked to identify the most appropriate indicators, targets, activities, time frames and responsibles, and focused on the following aspects: harmonized planning, data and information, human resources, regulatory instruments, and technical assistance and consultancies. Although challenging in the beginning, eventually the discussions proved productive for most of the participants in terms of information about the ambit of capacity strengthening in general and the project in particular, exposure to other perspectives and ideas, and the push to further specify results and activities beyond the daily routine. This exercise provided a first update of the logical framework, and was further refined in October 2018 in the margins of the Climate Days in Brussels with the help of consultants from MDF and staff members from MIREME and Enabel.

Capacity development viewed as an internal process of change within the partner towards a better ability to manage one’s affairs successfully, requires an embedded and gradual approach of change in areas such as behaviour, knowledge, tools and processes. In this first year, Enabel and its partners of the energy sector in Mozambique have stepped into the arena and started sounding and developing synergetic tunes through a donor alignment and joint planning and baseline workshop.  These can be seen as the first steps in the capacity building process, with the next one the approval and implementation of the elaborated logical results and M&E framework. The latter foresees regular moments for feed-back and adaptation, since supporting change is a dynamic undertaking which can be hardly fixated within one moment in time of planning and monitoring.


[1] GOM (2018) Estratégia Nacional De Electrificação; AfDB (2015) Green Growth Mozambique Policy Review and Recommendations For Action; BTC (2016)  Dossier Técnico e Financeiro Capacitação Institucional do Ministério dos Recursos Minerais e Energia (Mireme) e Do Conselho Nacional De Electricidade (Cnelec) Moçambique  Moz 14 030 11; BT (2017) Ficha Técnica & Financeira Energias Renováveis Para O Desenvolvimento Rural Fase 2 (RERD2) Moçambique; ALER (2017) Energias Renováveis em Moçambique – Relatório Nacional do Ponto de Situação (Segunda Edição) Renewables in Mozambique – National Status Report (Second Edition)