The Private Sector Development Programme has five components: the Business Enabling Environment Programme (BEEP), the Malawi Oilseeds Sector Transformation Programme (MOST), the Business Innovation Facility (BIF), and the Malawi Innovation Challenge Fund (MICF) and the Monitoring and Evaluation component. The first four programmes were hampered in some way by external factors during the year under review, including a near total rain failure during the 2015/2016 cultivation season, power shortages that resulted in daily blackouts lasting up to 16 hours.

The AfSEM aims at connecting the Continent’s energy strategies and action plans by harmonising regulatory frameworks and integrating generation, transmission, and distribution master plans. This will allow for the diversification of energy sources supporting energy transition, better trade and investments exchanges, and close the energy infrastructure gaps between regions and countries.

The goal is to build one of the largest electricity markets in the world, covering the African Union's 55 Member States, and a population of more than 1.3 billion.

Time is running out. At current emissions levels, the IPCC tells us that a safe 1.5°C “carbon budget” will be exhausted in 7 years. Africa is uniquely vulnerable to climate disruptions. For each additional degree of global temperature rise above the present level, one billion people will find themselves living in areas uninhabitable for humans, cattle and crops, as those areas will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert. Many of those places are located in Africa.

The CHOICES (Community and Household Options In Choosing Energy Services) project in South Africa's Eastern Cape sought to enable communities to make sustainable energy choices that reduced energy poverty and stimulated local development. The project focused on building local people's capacity to participate in identifying and exploring locally appropriate energy options with greater community benefits. 

The IEA has launched the four-year cross-agency Digital Demand-Driven Electricity Networks Initiative (3DEN), which is working to identify the policy, regulation, technology and investments needed to accelerate progress on power system modernisation and effective utilisation of distributed energy resources.

Universal energy access is one of the driving forces in alleviating poverty and ensuring sustainable and inclusive economic growth. The IEA World Energy Outlook, however, shows that close to 600 million people remain without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. This number rose in 2020 due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing progress observed in recent years. A delayed recovery would see the number of individuals without access to electricity increase from almost 600 to 630 million by 2030.

The Clean Energy Ministerial Hydrogen Initiative (CEM H2I) has currently 21 participating countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, European Commission, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, United Kingdom and United States.

“An Affordable and Sustainable Energy System for Sub-Saharan Africa” (Energy Sub-Saharan Africa) is a 4-year (2019-2023) programme funded by the European Union that is designed to support the aspirations of selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve their energy data management and long-term energy planning.

The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which enters into force on 1 January 2019, will help protect the climate by phasing down high global warming potential (GWP) hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are commonly used as refrigerants. Promoting energy efficiency of cooling technology can significantly increase those climate co-benefits.

The Pan-Arab Strategy for the Development of Renewable Energy, 2010–2030 adopted at the third Arab Economic and Social Development Summit by the League of Arab States (LAS, or the Arab League) in 2013 created a foundation for regional co-operation to drive renewable energy deployment in the Arab world. Leaders committed to increasing the region’s installed renewable power generation capacity from 12 gigawatts (GW) in 2013 to 80 GW in 2030.