New Commitment to Light-Up Africa
Friday, June 22, 2007
By supporting market development for modern lighting technology, the Lighting Africa program will support the development of a sustainable industry which will make clean, affordable, and superior lighting available to households and small businesses, particularly poor households with low or non-wage incomes in rural, peri-urban and urban areas. With the growth of this industry based on market forces, the project intends to increase the incomes of small and medium businesses, facilitate consumer access and demand, and improve market conditions for cleaner, more affordable energy products and services.
The Lighting Africa initiative builds from pilot programs undertaken as part of the IFC’s "Lighting the Bottom of the Pyramid" project. Lessons learned from that experience are guiding the Lighting Africa strategy. The Program is also forward-looking, as a cornerstone of the World Bank's Clean Energy and Development Framework and the Africa Energy Access Scale-up Plan.
An important distinction of the Light-Up Africa Program is that low-income people, instead of being understood as passive recipients of aid, are treated as consumers who can, if services and products are priced affordably, develop local, small business solutions to energy deficiencies. This change in perspective hopes to catalyze the private sector and expand the reach of global lighting firms. The Program also advocates for a realistic mixture of on-grid and off-grid solutions in order to get electricity to remote areas efficiently.
Contact
Anil Cabraal- World Bank, Fabio Nehme- IFC
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