UNICEF & UNDP

Clean Energy in Sudan

In 2019, UNICEF participated in our first Access to Modern Energy accelerator programme. At the time, they had found a partner in Practical Action. Together, they worked to face the challenge of supplying communities in rural Sudan with solar power for the purpose of running an e-learning centre for children who had no access to education and provide households with lighting so that they could do some homework in the evening while writing on actual paper rather than writing on a tablet. This work, dubbed as the ‘Lighting for Learning’ project, was done complementary to the larger ‘Can’t Wait to Learn’ project.

The portable lighting units that were provided incorporated four lightbulbs, a phone charging socket, and a radio. The radio provided for the ‘Lighting for Learning’ project became of particularly important use to households during the COVID-19 pandemic as it provided them with up-to-date information. The project also aimed to have a revolving funds approach for sustainability, in which Women Development Associations (WDAs) lead the programme to lease the solar units to households, and the revolving funds to procure more units to be distributed to others.

Popular Products

This larger project, the ‘Can’t Wait to Learn’ project, is still ongoing. The products were more popular than expected and the surrounding villages expressed their interest the products. In order to meet the increasing demand for e-learning solar-powered products, UNICEF joined our second Access to Modern Energy programme with the aim exchanging knowledge and seeking seed funding to intensify and broaden the programme’s activities. ‘Can’t Wait to Learn’ targets out-of-school children in various states of Sudan. Children aged 7-9 are targeted to learn literacy and numeracy using games on tablets. As the communities are off the grid, UNICEF had to provide a source of energy to charge the tablets overnight at the e-learning centres. The solution they came up with were the solar energy units. In order to meet the demand for e-learning and lighting for learning, UNICEF joined our second Access to Modern Energy programme with the aim exchanging knowledge and seeking seed funding to intensify and broaden the programme’s activities.

Exchanging knowledge

UNICEF is looking to bring potential partners and stakeholders together in Sudan where UNICEF and has the objective to reach 36,000 out-of-school children with their e-learning programmes. Partnerships are established with, for example, the UN Development Programme Sudan and the UN Refugee Agency in Sudan. Rasha Obaid, Innovation Consultant for UNICEF: “Despite having achieved a lot already, UNICEF needs the exchange of knowledge and experience on the topic of clean energy to realise a better future for the children in remote villages like Tamantay in Kassala state and other communities that don’t have access to energy, education or health.”

Solar Power Unit

For the pilot in this programme, UNICEF has already managed to establish a Solar Power hub within the UNICEF Sudan office. This will help green operations and provide access to energy in all their activities. Rasha Obaid: “We are putting in solar energy units so that we can charge the tablets for the e-learning programmes, but also for other purposes. Getting power to people where and when it’s needed for education, health, access to water, social protection, and overall community development. There is so much we can do with energy. I thought that taking part in this programme will help to address the energy challenge more generally. We want to pull these sections together to actually implement programmes at a community-level. the main challenge is getting access to energy for the communities.”

Hoping to deliver

The hope is that UNICEF alongside stakeholders and partners will deliver improved electricity access for 250,000 rural dwellers, 3.9 million USD diesel fuel annual savings, 17 thousand tonnes of avoided CO2 per year, and the creation of 34,000 jobs

Innovation steps towards impact