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ESMAP has played a key role in this successful outcome by providing US$750,000 in technical assistance to help design Lighting Africa’s conceptual framework and fund the program’s implementation.
ESMAP assistance—provided through the World Bank’s Africa Renewable Energy and Access Program (AFREA)—has also financed a wide range of technical and market development studies that underpin Lighting Africa and continue to guide the program today.
ESMAP support also helped Lighting Africa work with governments to integrate modern, off-grid lighting into their rural electrification programs and to remove regulatory or policy bottlenecks. In Ethiopia, for example, a policy and regulatory study conducted by Lighting Africa led to the government waiving duties on all off-grid lighting products that met or exceeded Lighting Africa’s recommended performance targets.
In FY2012, continued ESMAP support helped Lighting Africa programs expand their reach in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. Sales of modern lighting products—most of them solar-powered—grew by 120 percent in 2012 over the previous year, with a total of 1.3 million products sold in 20 African countries since the program’s launch.
The success of Lighting Africa in building sustainable markets for cleaner, affordable, and high quality solar lighting has led to its integration into a range of upcoming World Bank programs, including rural electrification schemes in Burkina Faso and Mali.
