ENERGY DEVELOPMENT
Access to modern, affordable, and sustainable energy is essential for poverty reduction, health, education, economic productivity, and climate resilience. RMI provides energy access research, evaluation, and consulting services for UNDP, the Africa Development Bank, GIZ, SIDA, bilateral donors, and government ministries of energy across the region.
Approximately 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, and the majority of households depend on biomass for cooking — with severe consequences for health (indoor air pollution), environmental sustainability, and the time burden of fuel collection, which falls disproportionately on women and girls. Expanding energy access requires both grid extension and off-grid solutions (solar home systems, mini-grids, improved cookstoves) integrated with behaviour change and capacity building for local maintenance.
RMI provides the following consulting services to regional bodies, UN agencies, donors, INGOs, NGOs, and government ministries:
- Carbon credit monitoring for clean energy projects
- Clean cooking adoption and usage studies
- Energy access baseline and endline surveys (MTF methodology)
- Energy efficiency in buildings and industry through energy audits and surveys
- Energy policy and regulation reviews
- Energy poverty assessments
- Gender and energy programme evaluations
- Health facility energy access surveys
- Mini-grid programme assessments
- On-grid/Off-grid market assessments
- Productive use of energy programme evaluations
- Solar home system impact evaluations
