Anke VANDEVELDE | 01/04/2019
In the first week of March, Management
for Development (MDF) consultant Ingrid Plag paid a visit to Enabel projects in
Mozambique to provide hands-on support to the baseline studies. For the Capacity
Building project at the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (CB MIREME)
this exercise formed the capstone of previous baseline meetings in Brussels and
Bilene. The RERD2 project team, on the other hand, has only been fully
operational since mid-October 2018 and therefore welcomed this opportunity to
bring together staff members from both Enabel and the partner institution FUNAE,
the National Energy Fund, to analyse, review
and update the project’s objectives, results, risks and gaps.
In 2009, the first phase of the
“Renewable Energy for Rural Development” project was formulated and two years later
its implementation took off. The RERD1 project recognized that the access to
energy is a catalyst for development and that by supporting rural
electrification it would contribute to rural development. With a budget of 23
million euros the first phase of the project focused on the construction of
photovoltaic systems in schools, health centres and administrative buildings as
well as water pumping systems and the development of micro-hydro with isolated
mini-grids. The RERD1 project was operational across the country (with installations in Manica, Sofala, Cabo Delgado, Inhambane, Niassa and
Zambezia), where a variety of renewable energy resources is widely available.
However, the high geographical dispersion of selected sites brought the need to
also widely spread resources across great distances. This limited the project’s
efficiency and capacity to generate visible impact. It was therefore decided that
the project’s second phase was to focus on maximum two provinces. Eventually, the
RERD2 steering committee decided to concentrate on one province: Zambezia. Apart
from the lesson learned above the formulation of the second phase also benefited
from other lessons learned: the current project, for example, undertakes
comprehensive feasibility studies and focuses more on the development of Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) and productive use of energy in order to increase
sustainability of systems.
The second phase of the RERD
project, with a total budget of 14 million euros, is not a mere continuation of
the previous phase. It is completely aligned with the current policies of the
Mozambican government and is a reflection of the country’s priorities. Electrification
is currently at the top of the Mozambican agenda, with the commitment of
establishing universal access to electricity by 2030. At the moment, less than
30% of the population has access to electricity. This percentage drops to 15%
in the rural areas. The past two years the Mozambican government took some
steps in the direction of the 2030 commitment. A new Energy Regulatory
Authority (ARENE) came in function, which is responsible for the supervision
and regulation of production, transport, distribution, commercialization and
storage of electricity. A range of new energy policies were developed such as
the National Electrification Strategy (ENE) and the Integrated Master Plan for
electricity infrastructure. These plans foresee an increase of the country’s
capacity to generate electricity and to secure access to electricity for the
entire population by 2030. Furthermore, the Electricity Law of 1997, currently
under advanced revision, aims to promote energy efficiency, participation of
the private sector, and renewable and
off-grid energy production and supply. Indeed, establishing connections through
the national grid is only a part of the solution as it is projected to only
reach half of the population by 2030. The government will also need to focus on
investments in off-grid systems, of which the construction and subsequent
transfer to EDM (Government Electricity Company) for operations are among the
responsibilities of the RERD2 main partner institution, the National Energy
Fund (FUNAE).
The visit of MDF consultant
Ingrid Plag was a perfect opportunity to bring together the personnel from both
Enabel and FUNAE working on the RERD2 project. Ingrid started the workshop by explaining
the importance of monitoring and the different elements of the Enabel
monitoring and reporting framework, known as “MoRe”. She also explained the
logical framework, the terminology and the risk matrix. Each theoretical
section was coupled with a practical exercise linked to the RERD2 project. In
short, the team received several assignments which allowed to thoroughly analyse
the project document and go over each outcome, output, indicator and risk and
check whether there were gaps, overlaps and outdated or missing information.
The expected impact remains the same as in the first phase project, i.e. “Contribute
to rural economic and social development by increased sustainable access to
energy”. For the outcome, the participants decided to specify
the province of intervention: “Increase access to energy in the rural areas of
Zambezia Province by investments in renewable energy systems and support
mechanisms ensuring sustainability”. Especially on output level there were some interesting discussions. It
was decided to more or less keep the three outputs: “1. Mini-grids
provide reliable and adequate energy services”, “2. Technical and financial
sustainability of the systems is improved”, “3. The capacity of FUNAE in planning and project management is improved”. However, participants pointed
out that without a solid, favourable legal framework the project would have
difficulties attaining its objectives and guaranteeing sustainable impact,
especially with regards to PPP and private sector involvement. Therefore, a
fourth results area was deemed necessary: “4. New legal framework is influenced by FUNAE”. This new output and the RERD2
project in general is definitely linked and complementary to the work of
Enabel’s capacity building project CB MIREME, which aims to improve the
performance of the energy ministry MIREME, its provincial directorates and the
new energy regulator ARENE.
The workshop left the
participants with a positive feeling and attitude. It allowed everybody to
understand the importance of a solid monitoring and risk matrix, to familiarise
themselves better with the project document, as well as to develop a better understanding
of each other’s roles. Last but not least, the project team took its first
steps into drawing up the baseline study report for the second phase of the
Renewable Energy for Rural Development project.
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Mozambique MOZ1503411