Preamble
Cross-boundary opportunities for women and the youth in the renewable energy sector across the EAC
The East African Community (EAC) is an inter-governmental regional bloc comprising eight Partner States. These include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The region is home to over 330 million individuals of which more than 60% are women and 80% are young people below the age of 35 years. The Community is highly endowed with vast renewable energy resources including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass and others. Despite the enormous potential, the partner states still have some shared challenges in pursuit of access to clean and modern energy. These bottlenecks include heavy reliance on biomass for cooking, low access to high-quality electricity, high reliance on fossil fuels for the transport sector, and limited access to modern energy in displacement settings and others. In these challenges exist enormous opportunities for the population to develop innovative solutions to address these bottlenecks. Despite constituting the majority of the EAC population, women and youths are still marginalised in the decision-making processes and have limited access to finance to be part of the solution to a just energy transition in the EAC. This session will explore the opportunities that exist in the energy transition journey of the EAC and how the Youth and Women can fully participate
Preamble
Regional harmonization Policies and regulatory environment for accelerated energy transition
The East African Community (EAC) is an inter-governmental regional bloc comprising of eight Partner States. These include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The Community is highly endowed with vast renewable energy resources including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass among others. Despite the enormous potential, the partner states still have some shared challenges in their pursuit of the access to clean and modern energy. These bottlenecks include heavy reliance on biomass for cooking, low access to high quality electricity, high reliance on fossil fuels for the transport sector, limited access to modern energy in displacements settings among others. There are several ongoing initiatives by the governments, development partners, private sector and civil societies to address these challenges and ensure a just energy transition in the region. In spite of all these initiatives, the countries remain at different levels in terms of access to modern and clean energy technologies, policy and regulatory framework. This session will explore the role regional harmonisation of policies and regulations can play in accelerating energy transition in the EAC.
Moderator: Mr Yunus Alokore, Technical Expert, EACREEE