Four organizations committed to accelerating universal electricity access – Hivos/ENERGIA, Power for All, Practical Action, and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation – recognize that the level of ambition and urgency for achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 is far from what's needed to deliver modern, affordable, sustainable and reliable energy for all before 2030. Most low energy access countries are still being left behind due to lack of necessary support. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, on our current trajectory, the number of unelectrified people is expected to rise, not fall.
This situation demands a much greater degree of coordinated and collective action. Already partners in the Power for All campaign since 2016, the four organizations have committed to deepen their collaboration to catalyze the needed market transformation (in finance, policy, supply and demand) for distributed renewable energy solutions that can deliver universal electricity access in 25 underserved countries before 2025, i.e. “25x25”.
The 25x25 Electricity Access Collaborative will partner closely with international, regional and local partners, leveraging impact by implementing a sustainable, multi-stakeholder public-private market activation and transformation model that delivers scale at speed at the national and sub-national levels. The Collaborative and its partners will work to identify barriers to market development, and remove them, thus stimulating growth.
“Many, many organizations are doing important work to address energy poverty, yet there is often a ‘not made here’ mindset that stymies collaboration, and therefore prevents accelerated and systemic change,” said Kristina Skierka, CEO at Power for All. “The 25x25 Collaborative seeks to remove those silos and unlock the power of focused and unanimous cooperation.”
The four organizations will also develop a coordinated approach to help drive context-specific support based on country needs, knowledge products, peer-to-peer and cross-country collaboration and information dissemination.
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