Challenges

The Sahel, consisting mainly of least developed countries (LDCs), is highly affected by climate change and fragility, which undermines the region’s food security, the countries’ long-term development prospects and opportunities for youth. Climate shocks such as droughts are becoming increasingly frequent and are affecting more people, while shorter, more intense and less predictable rainy seasons increase the risk of floods. Climate change represents a severe threat to the livelihoods of more than 80 per cent of the population living in rural areas and it has placed additional stresses on the region’s fragility, increasing internal displacement and migration. 

Moreover, Sahel countries face common challenges that pose serious risks to the development of their energy sector:  

• Significant energy deficit, mainly located in rural areas and distant from the national grid;  
• Saturated network due to insufficient investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure with limited capacity to manage an extended network;  
• High reliance on fossil fuels, posing a threat to the life of millions of women and children, and 
• Business environment that is not attractive enough to induce the private sector to invest in renewable energy.  

Toward a Solution

The Sahel is one of the world’s regions with the highest amounts of sunlight. The Desert to Power (DtP) initiative aims to harness that solar energy to generate 10 GW of additional capacity to provide clean electricity for 250 million people via public, private, grid and off-grid projects by 2030. The DtP Initiative contributes to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 while paving the road to achieving other development goals (8, 9, and 13). It also contributes to Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA) priority areas 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The project is phased, its initial focus being on the G5 Sahel countries, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, all of which are LDCs. 

The distinctive strategic values of the DtP initiative are: 1) it brings together countries with similar degrees of energy poverty, facing severe climate change risks yet with great opportunities and 2) it also brings together an international coalition of donors to tackle climate change by overcoming policy and regulatory barriers in order to attract the massive private sector investments required for solar energy development. Thus, the main challenge of the DtP initiative is to mobilize US$30 billion by 2030 for the deployment of 10 GW of additional solar energy capacity in the 11 Sahel countries, of which $3 billion for the G5 Sahel countries.  

The DtP initiative has set clear processes and procedures to secure the participation of key partners. In fact, despite the fact that the initiative has secured the endorsement of the Heads of State of each of the G5 Sahel countries, annual G5 Sahel countries ministerial meetings are held to inform the Ministers of Energy on the DtP initiative’s implementation milestones and to make key DtP decisions. On the operational front, the DtP Taskforce has been established with the support of other technical and financial partners for the timely execution of the DtP initiative and a local contact person from each country has been assigned to work closely with key local stakeholders to ensure the streamlined execution of the initiative. The Taskforce provides support to the countries by leading resource mobilization efforts, driving project preparations, providing technical assistance and capacity building activities, engaging partners, consolidating skills, and facilitating the efficient deployment of resources. The Taskforce is composed by Country Leads, (one from each country), regional leads and a pool of experts dedicated to environmental and social issues, project structuring, procurement and resource mobilization. The technical and financial partners, such as the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) and Africa50 have also seconded people to this taskforce.  

The basic aim of the DtP initiative is to create the right environment for solar energy investments in the Sahel countries by capitalizing on the sharing of good practices, experiences and expertise of one another and of other, Southern countries, which have been successful in implementing similar initiatives and to adapt them with the aim of accelerating access to energy. In this regard, Masen), which is chairing the steering committee of the initiative is focused on providing technical assistance to Sahel countries in order to duplicate the success that it has shown in Morocco. 

In addition, the expansion of the regional electricity grid is another important aspect of this South-South Cooperation, which will not only pave the way for power trading among Sahel countries but will also unleash each country’s solar energy generation capacity.  

Currently, the combined work of the taskforce and the technical and financial partners, under the supervision of the steering committee, has made it possible to obtain the validation, by the heads of state concerned, of the national roadmaps, the adoption of a regional roadmap as well as the mobilization of $170 million, coming from the Green Climate Fund and the Swedish Government, which will be used to initiate the project preparation phase.