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This policy brief by the African Center for Economic Transformation examines Africa's readiness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), emphasizing the urgent need to equip its rapidly growing youth population with STEM and ICT skills to avoid economic instability and harness a potential demographic dividend.

This report chapter from Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) analyzes development finance for energy projects with gender equality objectives between 2008 and 2018. It highlights a significant gap between general development finance and energy-specific finance targeting gender equality, identifies methodological failures in current tracking systems, and proposes a new framework for reporting and measuring gender-focused energy outcomes.

This policy brief by the Stockholm Environment Institute examines the interactions between the bioeconomy and the rapid growth of electrification technologies, such as solar PV, wind, and batteries. It categorizes these interactions as competitive, complementary, or synergistic, arguing that while electrification may disrupt some biofuel markets, it also provides opportunities for decarbonizing heavy industry and improving agricultural value chains in low-income countries.

This executive summary from the Stockholm Environment Institute examines the interactions between the bioeconomy—defined as sectors based on biomass production and processing—and the rapid cost reductions and deployment of variable renewable energy (VRE), specifically solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and lithium-ion batteries. The document categorizes these interactions as competitive, complementary, or synergistic, arguing that bioeconomy policy must be designed to integrate with and benefit from electrification to achieve deep decarbonization.

RMI is testing a "community-led" approach to rural minigrids in sub-Saharan Africa through its "Sharing the Power" project. Unlike top-down models, which RMI argues can lead to stranded assets and system failure, community-led projects are designed in partnership with local leadership and structures. RMI hypothesizes that this approach can increase electricity demand for productive use and reduce system costs and prices by 60% compared to 2018 levels. The program is currently evaluating implementation in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

The 2019 Energizing Finance report by Climate Policy Initiative and Sustainable Energy for All analyzes finance commitments for electrification and clean cooking in 20 high-impact countries (HICs). It finds that current investment levels are severely insufficient to meet Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) by 2030, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and highlights a critical funding gap for clean cooking and a continued, though slightly declining, reliance on fossil fuel investments.

The executive summary of the 'Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape 2019' report analyzes sustainable energy finance from 2013 to 2017, highlighting significant funding gaps for electricity and clean cooking access, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the continued investment in fossil fuels.

This fact sheet by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) describes a study on enhancing the climate resilience of water and energy infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system and the Open Source Energy Modeling System (OSeMOSYS), SEI evaluated seven major river basins to estimate the economic risks posed by climate change to hydropower and irrigation, providing recommendations for robust investment decision-making.

The 'Building a Resilient Future Outcome Document' records the proceedings of a one-day event held on 22 September 2019 in New York City, convened by the Global Resilience Partnership. The event brought together over 500 practitioners to identify actions and partnerships to accelerate climate adaptation and resilience, specifically responding to the UN Climate Action Summit's Call for Action. The document outlines high-level messages, specific commitments from seven thematic action sessions, and a roadmap for building a global movement to protect vulnerable communities from climate-related shocks.

The Resilience Insights report by the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) synthesizes evidence from innovation challenges and partner programs to identify effective strategies for building resilience in vulnerable communities. It emphasizes a shift from reactive to systemic, transformative approaches, highlighting five key intervention areas: nature-based solutions, empowerment of marginalized groups, information/technology, inclusive finance, and low-cost infrastructure. The report argues that effective programming must be systemic, layered, inclusive, and long-term, moving beyond short-term project cycles to achieve sustainable, non-linear transformational change.

This policy brief summarizes the IPCC's SRCCL report, detailing how human activity affects 75% of Earth's land surface and contributes to climate change. It highlights that while land currently acts as a net carbon sink, climate change and degradation (driven largely by agriculture and logging) threaten this capacity. The brief emphasizes that sustainable land management, incorporating indigenous knowledge and gender-proofing, is essential for limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C and ensuring future food security.

This report explores how cell captive insurance structures can address structural constraints in sub-Saharan African (SSA) insurance markets, such as fragmentation, lack of innovation, and limited capacity for specialised risks. It identifies four primary use cases—specialised risk management, retail innovation, market participation, and offshore financial centre development—and provides a decision framework for regulators to design appropriate legal and supervisory structures.

This research paper examines the potential for combining Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) with geo-spatial landscape models to better understand the interactions between energy, economy, and land use in regions heavily dependent on woodfuels, specifically focusing on a case study in Kenya.

The report highlights a critical mismatch in Sub-Saharan Africa between a rapidly growing youth population and the availability of formal sector jobs. Despite increased access to education, graduates often lack the STEM skills required by employers, while the 4th Industrial Revolution disrupts traditional labor-intensive manufacturing. Projections to 2030 suggest manufacturing will only account for 6.5% of employment, with women and youth remaining highly vulnerable to informal, low-earning work.

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is developing 'Clean and Green', a sanitation implementation framework for rural smallholder communities. The framework integrates health risk management (the 'Clean' track) with the productive reuse of local waste resources (the 'Green' track) to support multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This executive summary report, produced by WWF South Africa in collaboration with IIASA, assesses the current and future potential for sustainable aviation biofuel feedstock production in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a systems analysis approach and RSB sustainability criteria, the study identifies 'REMAIN' land—areas not required for food security or environmental conservation—and evaluates the technical potential of various feedstocks to meet a minimum 60% greenhouse gas (GHG) savings criterion. The report concludes that while significant technical potential exists, it is likely to decrease by 2050 due to population growth, food demand, and climate change.

The report 'Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape 2019', produced by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and Climate Policy Initiative, analyzes public and private finance commitments for electricity and clean cooking in 20 high-impact countries (HICs) from 2013 to 2017. It finds that while electricity finance reached a record high in 2017, it remains far below the levels required to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) by 2030, particularly for residential users and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Clean cooking finance saw a severe decline in 2017, further widening the investment gap.

The IDFC Green Finance 2019 report details the climate and environmental finance commitments of 22 out of 26 member national and regional development banks. In 2019, members committed $197 billion in green finance, representing approximately 25% of their total new commitments, with a strong focus on green energy and mitigation in the East Asia and Pacific region.

The 'Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit' provides a comprehensive framework for measuring women's empowerment across seven domains: economic independence, decision-making, confidence and self-worth, voice and leadership, time use, mobility, and health. It argues that while Savings Groups alone improve economic independence and self-worth, integrating economic development activities or gender-transformative programming is necessary to achieve broader social changes, such as shifting gender norms and reducing gender-based violence. The toolkit emphasizes the use of Theories of Change, a mix of quantitative and qualitative indicators, and data segmentation to account for the diversity of women's experiences.

This guidebook by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) examines how Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSSs) in agriculture can be leveraged to advance gender equality and women's empowerment in alignment with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Analyzing five key standards, the document identifies opportunities for VSSs to improve women's working conditions and decision-making, while warning that without gender-sensitive implementation, they may inadvertently increase women's unpaid labor burdens or reinforce patriarchal norms.