Africa is mobilizing capital to boost access to clean cooking with series of new deals aimed at funding energy transition projects across the continent.

The African Guarantee Fund (AGF) and the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) recently announced a partnership that promotes investments in clean cooking companies and programmes.

The two organizations, according to a statement (https://apo-opa.info/43HqviO), will focus on markets in East, Southern, and West Africa, where they see a significant need and opportunity to expand investments in green projects through clean cooking.

“The partnership will enable carbon project developers to access pre-financing, thus helping to speed up both customers’ access to clean cooking,” says Feisal Hussain, Senior Director of Innovative Finance at the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA).

The CCA, a non-profit organisation, operates with the support of the United Nations Foundation to promote clean cooking technologies in lower and middle income countries. Feisal Hussain says the CCA will use its network across the cooking and carbon markets in its partnership with the AGF in Africa. “We aim to lower the entry barrier for smaller clean cooking companies, helping to build carbon markets that are accessible to many.”

Partnerships for clean cooking tackle future risks

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that 970 million Africans lack access to clean means of cooking. And recent spikes in the price of cooking gas have forced millions back into more polluting but cheaper alternatives.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), if nothing is done to provide cleaner cooking alternatives, 1.67 billion Africans will rely on wood and charcoal for cooking by 2050.

That has serious impact on climate, on the conservation of African forests, and especially on health. According to 2022 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), 3.2 million people already die prematurely every year from illnesses attributable to household air pollution. No thanks to the incomplete combustion of solid fuels and kerosene used for cooking. But partnerships such as that between AGF and CCA can help to stem the dangerous tide.

“Our partnership with the Clean Cooking Alliance targets financial institutions to enable them grow their clean energy portfolios by developing innovative financial solutions that promote clean cooking and use of clean fuels,” AGF Group CEO, Mr. Jules Ngankam said.

AGF’s Green Guarantee Facility and Technical Assistance, according to Jules Ngankam, will address capacity-building gaps and risks that surround lending to green SMEs across Africa.

“It will also prepare these SMEs to become credit and investment-ready to allow them fully play their role of promoting sustainability and growing Africa’s green economy.”

More partnerships for improved access to clean cooking

Earlier this month in Vienna, the OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) deepened their partnership in advance clean energy transition (https://apo-opa.info/41DNPft) in Africa. They signed a US$1.5 million technical assistance grant agreement in support of the National Clean Cooking Transition Program in Madagascar.

The OPEC Fund grant will finance detailed studies and pilot projects as part of the Madagascar clean cooking transition programme. OPEC Fund is funding the programme with a US$35 million loan. UNIDO and project partners will also develop a framework to track development results.

“We are very pleased to expand our cooperation with UNIDO and to support our flagship clean cooking program in Madagascar with UNIDO’s vast technical and advisory expertise, which is critical for an effective implementation,” OPEC Fund Director-General Dr. Abdulhamid Alkhalifa said.

UNIDO is working with the OPEC Fund to expand the use of clean fuels and technologies to improve health and living conditions of communities in Madagascar, Director-General of UNIDO Gerd Müller said.  “This partnership will make a difference as we plan to roll-out clean cooking solutions to 500,000 households in five cities across the country.”

Madagascar is not alone

In Nigeria, a new Joint Venture agreement aims to invest in a range of carbon avoidance and removals projects as part of efforts to support the energy transition plan in Africa’s most populous country.

The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority and Vitol, a global energy and commodities company, completed the Carbon Vista JV (https://apo-opa.info/41GnDRC).  Both parties have set aside an initial $50 million to the new venture.

The JV’s first investment will go into a household energy efficiency programme. The programme, for a start, will deploy up to 200,000 devices each for clean cooking and water filtration.

“For countries like ours rich in fossil fuel, we also find ourselves in a situation where we are energy poor,” notes Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. The Nigerian Vice President says the energy transition remains tough for gas-rich and fossil fuel-rich countries.

That said, Yemi Osinbajo believes clean energy holds a lot of promise for the continent. “I believe Africa can become the first truly green civilisation to use renewable fuel for purposes of a transformative economic journey.”

Over the past three years, local and global headwinds reshaped spaces for the present, and future, of work. South African businesses are still grappling with the challenges and opportunities inherent to workplace strategy and space optimisation. If 2022 brought people back to the office, 2023 will be about persuading them to stay, says Adrian Davidson, the South African recently appointed as Head of Design at Tétris Design and Build for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA).

Tétris Design and Build has responded to the state of play in the commercial property sector by pushing design excellence from a technical, creative, and strategic point of view. At its core, design is about experience with purpose. And how we experience design has never been more important.  That’s because the new systems of work, whether remote or hybrid, are entirely trust-based. Design is shaped not only by the hand of its creator as an architect or designer, but heavily impacted by circumstances. We need only to look at buildings and cities throughout history to understand that they’re a language on their own that reflect what was going on in society at the time, whether politically, socially, economically, or technologically; and that the architects and designers consciously or unconsciously responded to that.

Fragmented physical spaces and converged digital spaces

It may be 2023, but the 20^th century still looms large. The way we designed organisations, and the way we managed ourselves and our work is exactly how a factory is managed; from the top down with production lines and separate departments. The industrial era dictated the way we arranged buildings, cities, office space, and work. Back in that analogue world, we didn’t have the tools to manage real complexity. Fast forward to today, and complex tasks are completed in nanoseconds by computers. Add a global pandemic to the mix, and the change that was already being driven by technology accelerated.

For the first time in human history, millions of people were sent home to work and got the job done. We converged digitally as the physical space of the office fragmented. But just as people got used to this, the trust factor started to waver.  Apple told their staff to come in three days a week, Morgan Stanley asked everyone to return to their desks, while Elon Musk gave Twitter employees the full-time return to the office ultimatum late last year.  There’s now a debate in many companies across the globe with questions about how to get people back in the office. Does it still make sense for employees to work remotely? Is hybrid worthy of the hype? How many days in the office is optimal? What Tétris Design and Build say to our client in response is that you can’t bring your staff back to the same office they left nearly three years ago.

More value per square metre

Office space can get smaller. This is good news for organisations looking to save money on real estate by having a smaller footprint. If the key priority is having dynamic spaces where employees can interact with their in-office and remote colleagues, then office space should offer a richer, higher-quality experience and more value per square metre.

Hybrid work isn’t about mandating two or three days in the office. It’s about creating an environment that supports the need to get whatever job or task that’s required done. The hybrid model is about nurturing the creativity that requires people to get together with the need people have for undisturbed focused work.

The office has multiple reasons for being. Connectivity and creativity are foremost, but the office is still important because it’s the vehicle that creates company culture. It’s vital that people interact with their colleagues, connect with them, and feel a sense of belonging and purpose.

The town square of the future

Roman piazzas, village town squares and ancient cathedrals all tell a story about how we arranged ourselves to interact. The modern office is not unlike a town square in that functions as a place where people can meet, collaborate, create, and build trust and culture. Getting the work done is the easy part of the equation. We have all the digital tools at our disposal to solve the technical part of getting our jobs done. The physical space is the part we now have to work really hard to solve. And that physical space is the one that has to create and support the organisational effort and structure that encourages people to collaborate to create a culture.

Creating this space is particularly challenging when companies are competing for highly skilled people who have a choice of top employers.  Companies need to draw people in and give them good reason and desire to want to meet and collaborate with their colleagues because it’s professionally fulfilling and because they gain tremendous value from the experience.

Resilience and innovation

Hybrid work today is really a tale of cities. Some organisations have fully embraced hybrid work while others remain undecided. Companies are rightly trying to navigate this path in a way that works for them because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for everybody and no winning formula that can be applied across the board. But how organisations arrange and organise themselves is also a question of how they become more resilient and more innovative.

Ends.

Images

• Adrian Davidson, Head of Design at Tétris Design and Build for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA).
• Tétris Design and Build Project images – related to the text above

About Tétris Design & Build

Tétris Design & Build is a leading design and build company with global reach, that creates environments that are beautiful, functional, inspirational and sustainable. They deliver services to businesses of all sizes on projects in the office, retail and hotel sectors, among others, counting many of the world’s most iconic brands as clients. Their offices span 35 cities in 18 countries, and their work draws on the energy, creativity and skill of a global team with deep local expertise, uniquely positioning us to help international and national businesses adapt their projects to local cultures and needs.