Aid on Spreadsheets

UNCDF- Renewable Energy Challenge Fund - Uganda - Renewable Energy Challenge Fund

In Uganda, 80% of households in rural areas use kerosene for lighting . In addition, 97.6% of rural households depend on biomass for their cooking energy needs. Access to renewable energy is driven by local SMEs in production, importation or redistribution of various renewable energy technologies. These SMEs however face multiple challenges including limited access to financing for their operations, low capacity levels and limited awareness of their products among target communities. Sweden aims at using this Renewable Energy Challenge Fund to enable at least 15 SMEs to scale up their initiatives to reach the rural poor with modern renewable technologies. The programme will provide winning SMEs with funding, access to advisory support for both technical and management capacity building and a marketing component to raise awareness on renewable energy hence driving increased demand for quality sustainable energy. The agreement partner is working closely with several sector and international stakeholders that will enable improving regulation and driving for high quality technologies to be distributed by the SMEs. Finally the programme will also aim at connecting renewable energy SMEs to private investment options thereby securing the results achieved through more sustainable funding options.

The objective of the RECF is to increase access to renewable energy for domestic, productive and social uses among underserved poor households especially in rural areas. To do so, UNCDF CleanStart will promote financial inclusion on the energy value chain – not only for the marginalized consumers, but also the small retailers that sell at the last-mile up to the SMEs that manufacture and distribute products/services higher up the chain.The RECF will support SMEs that have high social returns and market impact, but relatively low to medium financial returns with the aim of making them more financially sustainable whilst also benefitting the target market through scaling up and providing innovative affordable solutions.

Project ID

SE-0-SE-6-5118012201-UGA-23210

Activity status

2 - Implementation

Aid type

C01 - Project-type interventions

% to Uganda

100.00

Organisations

Funding

Sweden

Extending

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

Implementing

United Nations Development Programme

Accountable

UNCDF/UNITED NATIONS CAPITAL D

CRS code	%
Unknown (0)	100.0