Enhancing the Stand-Alone Solar (SAS) Market in Africa

During its inception period, between December 2018 and May 2019, the ACE TAF program carried out 6 Quick Win activities. These activities were chosen after stakeholder consultation was undertaken with a range of off-grid sector experts to identify potentially low-hanging enabling environment activities that could be started immediately, were likely to be able to achieve an outcome within 6 months, and were focused on activities that had been identified as potentially high priority for ACE TAF, such as productive uses of solar, E-Waste, quality standards and import duties and taxes, and in countries that were likely to be higher priority for ACE TAF such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and Uganda.

The Quick Win activities included an E-Waste Policy Handbook, Sierra Leone’s Compact Refresh, Nigeria Importation Handbook, Kenya Customs Handbook, Kenya Standards Action Plan and Uganda Solar Water Pumping report. Reports for each of the 6 Quick Win activities have been completed and submitted to DfID.

External reports have already been completed for several of the activities, and disseminated to relevant stakeholders, while the reports for the E-Waste handbook and Uganda report are currently being finalized and will be disseminated shortly.

The Nigeria handbook was the only activity which was not completed in ACE TAF’s Inception Period, due to various delays, and is currently being completed, including its validation and endorsement by relevant stakeholders.

All of the outputs from the Quick Win activities will continue to be used within the implementation period of ACE TAF to ensure they support the local enabling environment of as many countries as possible, and ideally lead to tangible impacts, such as the completed Compact Refresh in Sierra Leone has already achieved.

A seventh Quick Win activity was started, to support Senegal’s Solar Association COPERES, but ACE TAF’s Technical Working Group (TWG) recommended that it not be continued after the 1-month inception period as it was likely to take too long to complete and should instead be started during ACE’s implementation period. This activity will be starting shortly in Senegal.