Small Fund to implement Non-profit Renewable Project Ideas in Sub-Saharan Africa

Deadline: 31-Aug-21

The GIZ Green People’s Energy (GBE) project, through its Small Projects Fund, offers financial support to initiatives in the field of decentralised renewable energy. The fund assists organisations in implementing their own non-profit project ideas in sub-Saharan Africa. With its Challenge Call, the Fund is looking for concrete solutions to either of two identified local challenges to address.

• Increasing Off-grid System Sustainability: Across Sub-Saharan Africa, a significant part of off-grid systems such as Mini-Grids, Solar-HomeSystems, Solar Lanterns or devices such as solar pumps, cooling units, etc. are already or at risk of becoming dysfunctional. This has negative socio-economic as well as environmental implications adding to the unfavorable relation of high costs related to setting up the initial hardware as compared to relatively modest financial means required for repair or maintenance. Typical reasons for this challenge include:
  • No financial resources are available for maintaining or repairing systems
  • Lack of skilled personnel to perform maintenance and repair tasks
  • Warranty and after-sales services not available or not followed through
  • Lack of organisations or services targeting repair or maintenance
• Reducing CO2 Emissions via Energy Access: Access to sustainable and modern energy has a high potential to accelerate socio-economic development. This is particularly the case for productive use technologies, i.e. off-grid systems that enable income-generating activities. A relationship that is less familiar is the CO2-emssions reduction potential of renewable energy-based energy access. On the one hand new RE based energy access can mitigate large amounts of CO2-emissions compared to a standard access trajectory or by replacing polluting alternatives such as Diesel generators. On the other hand, CO2- emission certificates have the potential of unlocking additional sources of finance. Several barriers to promoting this sector coupling currently exist:
  • The framework for calculating CO2-emission reductions of different energy access project setups is not well developed.
  • Lack of data on the CO2-emission reduction potential of various energy access technologies
  • Insufficient project approaches exist that aim at generating CO2 emission reduction certificates.
  • Low innovation potential of energy access projects intending to integrate coherent climate change mitigation metrics in their project approaches.

• Ghana: despite the fact that the average per capita income of around 1,700 Euros per year is relatively high by African standards?
• Mozambique: Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world? 70% of almost 30 million people must get by on less than 1.70 Euros a day (2016).

• Applicants must be either non-profit organisations or local for-profit organisations in the country of implementation without commercial ties to for-profit organisations from industrialised countries.
• The Challenge Call prioritizes solutions from within the nine Green People’s Energy focal countries: Ethiopia, Benin, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. However, applications from other sub-Saharan countries are also welcome.
• Legal entity of the applicant and public benefit:
  • The applicant can be a non-profit organisation with a registered legal personality or SME based in the country of implementation with no structural links to industrial nations.
  • For any applicants: There must be no limited tax liability in Germany that could be caused e.g. by generating a taxable income in Germany. In this case applicants are not eligible. For applicants based in Germany a non-profit status (“Freistellungsbescheid”) is mandatory. German for-profit organisations are not eligible.
  • Consortia composed of maximum two organisations are eligible and can apply.
• Further criteria to follow are:
  • The applicant can apply for both challenges separately, but only once per challenge.
  • The applicant must have a fixed location (registered office) in the target country.
  • The applicant must have a minimum annual turnover of 20.000€ and/or minimum of three full-time equivalent staff.
  • The legal entity must exist at least for 3 years (since July 2018).
  • The application must confirm that there are no allegations of corruption or investigations against the applicant’s executives or management.
• Documents to be provided during the application process:
  • Certificate of registration
  • Tax registration certificate
  • Organisational chart
  • For non-profit organisations: Proof of non-profit status under local regulations and organisational statutes

For more information, visit https://gruene-buergerenergie.org/en/get-involved/challenge-call/