This second edition from 2025 provides an update to the landmark report from 2019, based on a new survey of 1192 individuals working in the sector, and 233 companies and organizations. The headline finding was that despite widespread efforts, the share of women in renewable energy has not grown over the past six years: it … Continue reading “Renewable energy: A gender perspective (Second edition)”
This report uses economic modelling to investigate the viability of ten different productive use applications of solar power in agriculture (oil extraction, maize shelling, rice hulling, fruit juice making, sugar cane juicing, fruit drying, flour milling, peanut shelling and coffee pulping). It investigates each technology in detail and then calculates the profits and other benefits … Continue reading “Productive Use Report – Evaluation of solar-powered agricultural technologies for productive-use applications: A modelling approach”
This brief report introduces the concept of the WEF nexus and explains how the FAO has applied the nexus approach in its work, with many case study examples.
This webpage provides an introduction to smart grids, an overview of recent progress and recommendations for governments and utilities.
This report provides recommendations for improving the availability of sex-disaggregated and specific gender equality data in the energy sector, to improve decision making and programme design.
This guide by the Covenant of Mayors of Sub-Saharan Africa shows that urban planning tends to be gender blind, with the design of urban street lighting as a key example. It provides a manual, aimed at African cities, on how to develop gender-responsive public lighting projects. English: https://comssa.org/download/rxeWs6zcOXbTl8qRidGZ9nCB7EFAI4Pa/Gender-sensitive-public-lighting.pdf French: https://comssa.org/download/U3kjdTBHqV6FGKfoI71EgLY2wZrSvtz8/Eclairage-public-sensible-au-genre.pdf
This report investigates different models for the deployment of e-bike fleets and charging/swapping infrastructures in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the potential advantages of battery swapping for riders, highlights emerging best practice for Batteries as a Service, and provides recommendations on policy, regulation and financing to support uptake of e-motorcycles and the growth of BaaS in … Continue reading “Charge Up! Battery-as-a-service: A pioneering business model for driving the e-mobility transition in Africa”
This policy brief responds to the pressing demand for harmonising the imperatives of a Just Energy Transition (JET) with the intricate dynamics of the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus in the context of South Africa’s broader sustainable development imperatives.
People need water, energy, and food to sustain their livelihoods, grow economies, and achieve sustainable development. The interactions between these resource sectors form the crux of water-energy-food (WEF) nexus assessments. This study analyses the WEF nexus of 54 African nations and identifies bottlenecks resulting from water, energy, or food insecurity.
This report calls for greater cross-sectoral collaboration to advance energy, water and food security in Africa, highlighting how synergies between the sectors of water, energy and food create a multiplier effect, ensuring a greater return of investment.