Anke VANDEVELDE | 28/11/2018
By A.Van de Velde and E.Waeterloos, Enabel MaputoIn 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)
Lire la suite
Mozambique MOZ1403011