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The document examines the shift in India's Africa policy from Cold War-era support for anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles to a modern approach centered on economic diplomacy and energy security. While India seeks to secure crude oil and LNG to fuel its projected economic growth, the author argues that its engagement remains 'development friendly' and 'Third Worldist,' evidenced by diversified trade, capacity-building initiatives, and multilateral cooperation through forums like IBSA.

The document lists ten financing programs providing grants, seed funding, and technical assistance for renewable energy technologies. These programs target various stages of business development, from R&D and pilots to scaling and commercial expansion, primarily within African nations and other low-income or developing regions. Funding amounts vary significantly, ranging from small grants of US $15,000 to large-scale transition grants of up to US $15 million.

The document serves as a career manual for students and young professionals entering the sustainable energy sector. It outlines various professional pathways—including engineering, policy, finance, and data science—and provides a detailed breakdown of the internal and external teams at SEforALL. The guide emphasizes the need for both technical STEM qualifications and soft skills like adaptability and communication to support the achievement of SDG7 and the Paris Agreement. It also details SEforALL's inclusive, remote recruitment process and its commitment to increasing the participation of women and youth in the green economy.

The report highlights a critical 'data deficit' in the energy sector, where the lack of sex-disaggregated data reinforces male-oriented policymaking and hinders the achievement of SDG7. It identifies systemic barriers to women's participation in the energy workforce—where they represent only 32% of the renewable energy sector—and the disproportionate impact of energy poverty on women and girls. The document provides a framework for designing gender indicators, emphasizing the need for both supply-side (employment/leadership) and demand-side (consumer preferences/household decision-making) metrics. It concludes with best practices for national policymakers, statistical offices, and international organizations to strengthen data capacity, particularly in low-income countries.

The document explores how battery storage can enable eCooking in areas with weak, unreliable, or non-existent electricity grids. It specifically proposes a Battery Swapping Model (BSM) where users lease batteries from a central station, reducing upfront capital burdens and ensuring professional battery maintenance. The paper identifies a 'Goldilocks Zone' for this model—informal urban settlements, humanitarian settings, and mini-grid edges—where population density and proximity to stations make daily swaps practical. It concludes that while promising, the BSM requires targeted pilots to determine financial and operational viability.

The report evaluates the extent to which gender considerations are embedded in national energy policies and the corporate practices of energy companies. It utilizes a scoring system to analyze female participation, economic empowerment, education, and labor rights across different income levels and energy sectors, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electrification.

The document examines Tanzania's water-poverty nexus, highlighting a significant 'implementation gap' where progressive policies on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and decentralization are hindered by limited institutional and financial capacity. It emphasizes the critical role of rainfed agriculture, which supports the majority of the poor, and the need to integrate 'green water' flows into management strategies. The report also notes severe challenges in sanitation coverage and the conflict between hydropower and irrigation needs in major river basins.

The CHAPOSA project investigated charcoal production systems around Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, and Maputo between 1989 and 1998. Findings indicate a significant reduction in closed forest cover in all three areas, with the most severe depletion around Maputo. Charcoal serves as a critical income source for rural poor and a stable, affordable energy source for urban poor, creating a socio-economic dependency that complicates regulation. The report argues that current fiscal and licensing systems are inadequately enforced, treating forests as open-access resources. To mitigate deforestation, the authors recommend a coordinated approach: enforcing licensing to increase prices and fund forest management, while simultaneously providing rural income alternatives (e.g., improved agriculture) and urban energy substitutes (e.g., expanded electricity access).

The EU-UNDP Low Emission Capacity Building Programme is a collaborative initiative funded by the European Commission and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. It aims to strengthen the institutional and technical capacities of developing countries to transition toward low-emission, climate-resilient pathways by supporting the development of GHG inventories, Low-Emission Development Strategies (LEDS), and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs).

This delivery report describes a matchmaking workshop held on 4 May 2021 by TEM – Lund University as part of the sWASH&grow project. The event aimed to explore how sustainable healthcare infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries can serve as a leverage point for implementing Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) solutions and fostering sustainable community development.

The document highlights that over three billion people rely on traditional solid fuels, causing significant indoor air pollution and contributing to 1.6 million annual deaths. It notes that black carbon from these fuels accounts for 18% of global GHG emissions. The brief advocates for 'source' interventions, such as LPG, ethanol, and improved stoves, and emphasizes the need for consumer choice analysis to ensure technology adoption, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The document provides a conceptual framework for institutional capacity development (CD) in developing countries, integrating traditional institutional development, governance, and micro-economics. It defines institutional capacity as a combination of functions, resources, and structures, and argues that sustainability depends on local ownership and the ability to secure domestic resources. The authors propose generic 'capacity areas'—such as information, competence, and governance—and suggest monitoring tools like the Institutional Development Framework (IDF) and the Organisational Capacity Assessment Tool (OCAT) to track progress through specific indicators.

The text outlines a strategy for gender transformation in Sub-Saharan African agriculture by moving away from "power over" dynamics toward "power with," "power to," and "power within." It introduces a conceptual framework based on three interconnected dimensions: agency (the ability to make and act on choices), structure (the visible laws and invisible cultural norms), and relations (the networks and partnerships individuals form). The author argues that targeted projects for women often fail if they do not simultaneously address access to productive assets and the broader social structures that restrict women's decision-making power. The framework emphasizes that sustainable change requires engaging men as allies and coordinating actions across individual, household, community, and institutional levels.

The report examines the energy-agriculture nexus in Africa, focusing on five case study countries: Cameroon, Mali, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. It develops three primary scenarios—Reference, Moderate Improvement, and Accelerated Growth—to project energy needs for on-farm activities, crop processing, and transport. The analysis highlights that while high-input mechanized farming significantly increases commercial energy intensity, food security gains in some contexts, such as Sudan, can be achieved without proportional increases in energy consumption. The document also explores the role of agro-industries and the potential for energy efficiency improvements in irrigation and crop curing.

The report examines how gender inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa hinder agricultural productivity and proposes an 'empowerment pathway' focusing on agency, structure, and relations. It provides evidence that closing the gender gap in resource access could increase farm yields by 20-30%. Through case studies in countries like Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Uganda, the document illustrates successful strategies including gender-responsive budgeting, household-level gender analysis, and the engagement of traditional leaders to secure women's land rights and improve value chain participation. It also addresses the specific intersection of gender and 'climate-smart' agriculture, emphasizing that women's vulnerability to climate change is exacerbated by existing structural inequalities.

The report analyzes how rigid gender norms, lack of capital, and limited asset ownership prevent women from benefiting from agricultural commercialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights that women often perform the bulk of the labor but lack control over the resulting income, which can lead to poor product quality and reduced household nutrition. The document provides a strategic framework for interventions, ranging from professionalizing traditional 'women's crops' to redistributive actions that challenge male-dominated chains. Case studies from Kenya (SHEP) and Zimbabwe (ZOPPA) demonstrate that combining gender awareness training with technical capacity building and organic certification can improve income parity and market access for women farmers.

The report argues that climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is only effective when it addresses gender inequalities that make women more vulnerable to climate change and hinder their adoption of sustainable practices. It highlights that women often face barriers such as insecure land tenure, limited capital, and restrictive social norms. Through case studies in countries like Kenya, Ghana, and Uganda, the document demonstrates that successful interventions require a combination of enhancing women's agency (through training and knowledge networks), reforming institutional structures (securing land and credit rights), and transforming gender relations (encouraging male support and shared decision-making). Specific examples include the use of biogas digesters to reduce women's domestic workloads and the implementation of 'climate analogue' visits to share adaptation strategies.

The executive summary argues that strengthening legal forest rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities is a vital tool for mitigating climate change. It finds that forests under strong legal recognition and government protection experience significantly lower deforestation rates than those without such protections. The document emphasizes that legal rights alone are insufficient if governments undermine them through the allocation of resource concessions or failure to prevent illegal encroachments.

The document examines the role of local financial institutions (LFIs) in East Africa in financing the productive use of renewable energy (PURE), particularly for SMEs and the agricultural sector. While there is strong interest in expanding PURE lending, LFIs face constraints such as limited staff capacity, credit risks, and insufficient funding. The paper suggests that 17 surveyed LFIs require $174 million to expand their lending and recommends a shift toward more direct lending from balance sheets, the use of green bonds, and collaboration with development partners for de-risking instruments.

The document presents the Energy Access Explorer (EAE), a digital public good providing over 70 datasets for Tanzania, including a collaborative database of 135 mini-grids. It highlights the platform's ability to perform multi-criteria analysis (MCA) to identify market expansion opportunities and prioritize energy access in rural areas, where connectivity is only 11%. The report notes that solar PV and hydropower dominate the mini-grid landscape, and that the market has become more favorable following a 2021 policy shift allowing cost-reflective tariffs negotiated with EWURA.