Lagos, Nigeria, May 20, 2024—The Africa Minigrids Program (AMP) convened its Community of Practice (CoP) for the first time in person before attending the Alliance for Rural Electrification Energy Access Investment Forum (EAIF 2024).
Through the CoP, AMP aims to accelerate the development of skills and know-how related to minigrid adoption by helping practitioners build a network of peers and figure out what to do, how to do it, and who to turn to for support. To ensure effective deployment and high impact of national projects, the AMP regional project provides knowledge tools to enhance the capacity of Project Management Units (PMUs) and relevant actors on key minigrid topics, including Minigrid Pilot-Plan, Productive Use of Energy, Climate Resilience and Community Centric Minigrid Deployment Models.
Before EAIF 2024 officially kicked off, UNDP and RMI gathered the CoP for a day-long closed-door workshop to strengthen community connections and advance learning through facilitated deep dives. The engagements consisted of several sessions, ranging from reviewing minigrid pilot development toolkits and identifying challenges and solutions to addressing project barriers at the national level and leveraging communications.
Highlights
- The AMP sat down with The Energy Talk podcast to discuss the initiative’s details. Host Olubunmi Olajide spoke with UNDP Principal Technical Advisor, Climate Change Mitigation, Mateo Salomon, RMI’s Nigeria Program Director Suleiman Babamanu, and others, and the series goes live in August 2024.
- Christelle Odongo-Braun, AMP Regional Project Manager, joined a panel on ‘Innovation and Collaboration in Technical Assistance for Minigrids’. “AMP is designed to facilitate exchanges and learning between countries. At the core is a Community of Practice made up of national projects all following a similar structure in the way they are designed, yet with contextual differences,” she shared.
- The AMP brought together partners and stakeholders from the African Climate Action Partnership (AfCAP), CLUB-ER, Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA), African Forum for Utility Regulators, and others for an engagement session to review what is happening in the sector.
- Mateo Salomon, Principal Technical Advisor, Climate Change Mitigation, UNDP, participated in a high-level panel session: ‘Towards climate resilient grids – interconnecting DRE and main grids for climate resilience and energy efficiency’.
- The AMP finalized an MoU with CLUB-ER. Hary Andriantavy, Executive Secretary of CLUB-ER, Mateo Salomon, and RMI Principal Jason Meyer celebrated the agreement at the AMP exhibition booth, joined by Christelle Odongo-Braun and Project Manager Sascha Flesch. The partnership will design, develop, and deliver content to build stakeholder expertise through knowledge sharing and collaboration. By leveraging AMP and CLUB-ER’s Communities of Practice, the aim is to solve common challenges, promote skills development, and exchange expertise. The collaboration is set to drive leadership, innovation, and best practices in renewable minigrids.
- The AMP exhibition booth was at the center of all the engagements, where we connected with all the attendees, including investors, developers, government officials, and development practitioners.
