​REGIONAL OVERLAPS:  AFRICA AND S/SE ASIA

In 2019, through interviews with African practitioners and dialogue among S/SE Asian practitioners supporting African regions, we identified common elements between the two contexts.

​Relevance of Community-Scale Hydropower
​As in S/SE Asia, community-scale hydropower can provide affordable and reliable electricity to enhance rural livelihoods, towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Several countries in Africa have significant pico, micro, and mini hydro (<1MW) potential yet there has been minimal implementation, while large numbers of communities remain un-electrified.  As in S/SE Asia, international donors in Africa target solar PV interventions, and non-PV solutions are not as popular. There are however small hydro projects (above 1MW and less than 30MW), developed and owned by foreign companies using foreign technology.  Also, as in S/SE Asia, there is a  geopolitical push for large hydropower despite its environmental and social consequences. This focus on large scale energy infrastructure is mobilizing civil society organizations (CSOs) to make the case for micro hydro and other decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions. However, most CSOs do not yet have the knowhow to do DRE project implementation.

Committed Local Practitioners
The portion of Africa's DRE private sector that is able to access funding and advance is the foreign-run private sector. In addition, there are passionate and committed local practitioners that are innovating and locally manufacturing micro hydro equipment to bring electricity to communities in need, who are not able to access foreign funds.  This is because, similar to S/SE Asia, most government and international initiatives lack the mandate and expertise to identify, engage, and advance local practitioners so that they can also benefit from international resources.  In S/SE Asia there is significant evidence showing that long-term sustainability of micro hydro projects is greatly dependent on how well ownership, management, and financing are anchored at the local level.

Missed Opportunity:  Building onto Existing Local Technical Capacity
Local actors in Africa are paving forward local fabrication of micro hydro technology.  While in a few contexts local fabricators are supported by international partners, e.g. the work of Energising Development (EnDev) in Ethiopia, most local technical capacities have not been leveraged or further built upon.  Therefore, they remain at a nascent stage of development -- limited to the pace of self-learning and self-financing local technology development. Similarly in S/SE Asia, despite considerable international donor investments in micro hydro technology transfer during the last three to four decades, there is now hardly any international support for developing local capacities in design and manufacturing.  The trending focus in both African and Asian Pacific contexts is on kilowatts installed and households electrified, and less attention to who is enabled to do energy access and how, and what implications that has on community empowerment.
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR AFRICA - ASIA EXCHANGE

With the start of the new year, HPNET seeks partnerships to move forward the following areas identified for South-South,  two-way knowledge exchange between African and S/SE Asia regions.

Evidence-based Advocacy
In partnership with local organizations and practitioners committed to advancing community-scale hydropower, HPNET seeks to build the awareness of decision makers in both contexts on mini-grid technology differentiation and on proven thematic solutions,including:

• Policy and Regulatory Frameworks.  African contexts such as Nigeria and Tanzania have established advanced policy and regulatory frameworks for mini-grid development, including interconnection to the main grid.  Experience-sharing from these contexts will benefit S/SE Asia countries seeking to do the same. ​

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• Ownership, Management and Financing Models.  Asian contexts such as Nepal and Myanmar show how different types of ownership, management, and financing models impact the long-term sustainbility and socio-economic impact of projects.  In S/SE Asia the lessons required 30 years of hindsight, however nascent African micro hydro contexts can use the Asian experience to avoid pitfalls and leap frog into appropriate best practices.

 

• Climate Resilience thru Watershed Strengthening.  Rural communities of African and S/SE Asian regions will be among the worst hit as the climate crisis grows.  The watershed strengthening and reforestation aspects of community-scale hydropower increase the climate resilience of micro hydro projects as well as the communities, reducing the impact floods and drought.

Technical Standards and Local Manufacturing
Utilizing the expertise of local manufacturing coaches and experts, HPNET seeks to build the  capacities of local practitioners in both regions to locally design and manufacture electro-mechanical components of pico, micro, and mini hydropower, including various turbines and electronic load controllers.  Technical standards appropriate for different capacities and the local context will be established using lessons related to standardization from African and S/SE Asian contexts.

Local Social Enterprise Development
In partnership with local implementing organizations, HPNET seeks to facilitate the development of projects that are established as local social enterprise.  HPNET's initiative Social Enterprise for Energy, Ecological and Economic Development (SEEED) supports local practitioners and communities to transition toward financially viable projects, where the micro hydro project is run as a social enterprise that also powers productive end use enterprise.

Did you miss our fourth quarterly webinar, ​Mini-Grid Planning: Integrated Energy Planning for Rural Electrification? You can now watch it below!

SPEAKERS
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​DR. CATHERINA CADER
RESEARCH UNIT OFF-GRID SYSTEMS
REINER LEMOINE INSTITUTE, GERMANY 
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Dr. Catherina Cader is an expert in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and rural electrification planning. She has been working at Reiner Lemoine Institute since 2012 and is part of the Research Unit Off-Grid Systems. She is particularly interested in rural electrification planning in countries of the Global South with consideration of renewable energy. Catherina holds a PhD in Geography from Justus Liebig University Giessen. For her dissertation she conducted research on rural electrification planning in Nigeria. Her PhD project was supported by a scholarship from the Reiner Lemoine-Foundation. She also holds a Master of Science in Geography from Philipps University Marburg and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Management from Justus Liebig University Gießen. Through field visits and self-developed trainings on the use of GIS for rural electrification planning, Catherina has great expertise on the political, geographical, economic, and technical challenges of local energy supply situations. By developing and applying GIS-based methods, she brings the spatial component into RLI research using open source software. Catherina has experience as a project manager in several projects – her work has taken her to various places including Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, Nepal, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
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THEMATIC DISCUSSANT
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DIPTI VAGHELA
​NETWORK FACILITATOR AND MANAGER 
HYDRO EMPOWERMENT NETWORK (HPNET) 
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Dipti Vaghela is the co-founder and manager of the Hydro Empowerment Network (HPNET), a south-south knowledge exchange platform that advances policy, technology, and socio-environmental aspects of small-scale hydropower across ten countries since established in 2013. Dipti brings sixteen years of experience in developing decentralized renewable energy solutions for rural electrification in S/SE Asia, bridging communities, local entrepreneurs, field-based NGOs, policy makers, and funding agencies. In 2016 she was awarded a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, placed at the Renewable Energy Association of Myanmar (REAM). Based in Myanmar, she supports and learns from Myanmar’s indigenous micro/mini hydropower, biomass energy, PV-irrigation practitioners. Dipti holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Science in Environmental Studies from San Jose State University.
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We are glad to have HPNET Member Mr. Atud Jonathan Asaah from Cameroon, as a guest blogger to share his views on the potential and impact of hydro mini-grids in his country.

Africa harbors one of the world’s best renewable energy resources which can be used to harness electricity. Unfortunately, in 2012 the International Energy Agency announced that about 590 million people in Africa live without access to electricity. Meanwhile, a similar report in the same year quoted that there were 1.5 billion people around the world that don’t have access to electricity.

From the two reports cited above, it can be seen that Africa alone had approximately 40% of those living in darkness in the world. Even though this report is 7 years old, there may be little change as regards the proportion of Africans living in the dark today because in most of these African countries, the grid extension program has been very slow. ​

This low rate of rural electrification (17%)is due to a series of factors:

• Cameroon has a population of above 24 million people and 45% of these people live in rural areas. These rural areas are organized in small villages mostly located in geographically difficult topography that makes it very expensive for grid extension in terms of distribution infrastructures. In most cases, the terminus of the grid line maybe too far from the village.
• The initial demand in most of these villages is usually very small and the national grid company may find it not cost effective.

On the other hand, these villages are naturally endowed with unlimited renewable energy resources on the spot which include abundant rivers, streams, wind and the sun that could constitute reliable sources of electricity for these remote communities. Law N ° 2011/022 of 14 December 2011 of Cameroon governing the electricity sector in its Article 29 provides for conditions to own private power production units but there is still a very timid entry of private investors in the energy sector, which therefore calls for more awareness from government to lure these partners into synergy to meet up with the demand.
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Cameroon is found within CEMAC-The Economic community of Central African states and the most populated country and acting as the economic hub of this block. Its energy sector remains a major prerequisite to meet up its economic giant position within this economic block which is considered a regional integration used as a tool for economic growth. The government cannot achieve this energy objective alone via its current  grid extension program.

WAY FORWARD

Most of the villages of these rural areas have been naturally endowed with renewable energy resources like the sun, wind and small streams which can be used to harness their energy on the spot.  The more stakeholders fold their arms and see this poor population continue to live in the dark, the more villagers rely heavily on biomass -- cutting down trees in the forest to collect wood and produce charcoal for cooking and heating, kerosene lamps used to provide lighting, petrol and diesel will be used to power standby generators.

We cannot sit and watch these practices when at the same time we intend to mitigate the green gas effect which is causing global warming (climate change mitigation). Renewable energy using indigenous resources like those listed above can play a catalyst role in this energy revolution. Reference is made  here to small-scale hydroelectricity systems, solar systems, and wind power. This will lead to bringing the sources of energy back to the community level- a participatory approach to energy generation which gives local communities greater autonomy over the infrastructure.

Many of the people who lack access to electricity in Cameroon live in these villages with sufficient sunshine, abundant streams and rivers that flow throughout the year and in most cases have hills that provide the necessary gravity to rotate a micro hydro turbine.

Creation of community micro hydro power stations

These are micro power stations that have maximum capacity of up to 100 kW and are easily managed by the community. Those communities, which are isolated or found far off the national grid, can be powered by these independent power units which involve harnessing small water sources usually in hills that are flowing under the natural influence of gravity with minimum civil construction infrastructure. The water is tunneled through a pipeline (penstock) to rotate a turbine connected to a generator to produce electricity. The penstock builds up pressure from the water that has traveled downwards from a hill. The electricity is then sent to the village community for household consumption or sold to the national grid. The construction of a community micro hydro project requires community mobilization especially at the civil phase. The local community needs to be well aware on the importance of the scheme​.

Community battery charging units

These are small hydro power plants of few watts up to 5 kW which can be used to charge DC batteries at the community level. These batteries are later used with inverters to obtain AC current which is used to power domestic appliances.

Community-based micro hydro repair workshops

The main difficulty encountered in most cases in running micro hydro systems is the lack of a ready supply of affordable turbine parts and the lack of domestic manufacturing capacity.  The presence of local technical workshops that can fabricate simple components needed to run the system is vital for the sustainability of the project. Most of the remote micro hydro systems in Africa have been closed down because of lack of spare parts for its components.  Lack of local fabrication workshops poses a great challenge for rural electrification.​

​Africa is losing more forest than any continent and making it more vulnerable to climate change. This seems to be the right moment for policy makers to intervene via promotion of these community-base micro hydro schemes -- which will not only protect our forests but equally improve on the livelihood of these rural population.​