Kampala CPD Course Plenary Sessions and Group Work – Days 2 – 5

The SAMSET Project hosted a continuing professional development course at Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda from the 7^th – 11^th November 2016. As shown in the previous post, the urban energy management issues present today in Kampala make the city an appropriate place to discuss the future of sustainable urban energy transitions.

The Hon. Dr Chris Baryomunsi, Minister of State for Housing, addressing the opening of the CPD Course. Image: Daniel Kerr

The course was opened with an address from the Hon. Dr Chris Baryomunsi, who gave an address on the overarching issues facing urban Kampala today, include economic growth, population growth and land management. The first plenary day of the course focused on resource efficiency in energy planning and management in the urban sphere. The presentations on this day focused on the mandate that municipal officials have in the energy space (or lack thereof) and a focused discussion on the importance of data in energy planning, as well as case studies of successful initiatives in other Sub-Saharan African cities and the challenges they faced. The city of Cape Town was presented as a successful sustainable transitions case study, with the presentation from Sumaya Mohamed from the City of Cape Town Energy Authority detailing a number of the successful interventions the city has implemented, including electrification of “backyarder” properties and the development of the metropolitan bus transit system. The place of data was also highlighted through Adrian Stone from Sustainable Energy Africa’s exercise, encouraging participants to analyse and discuss data from a recent Jinja state of energy survey themselves.

The second day of the course focused on participation and key stakeholders in energy management, and methods to identify the stakeholders through network mapping, as well as to what extent these stakeholders and able (or willing) to advocate for energy transitions. Presentations on this day focused on the realities of bringing sustainable planning into action, whilst managing competing demands, with experiences and cases from the SAMSET Ghanaian partner municipalities, Awutu Senya East and Ga East, as well as from the Ugandan partner municipalities Jinja and Kasese. The closing keynote was presented by David Kasimbazi, head of the Centre for Urban Governance and Development at Victoria University, on the definitions of governance and good governance, and how this affects sustainable energy transitions in cities.

Urban energy budgetary planning group session, led by Gamos. Image: Daniel Kerr

The third day of the course focused on the place that policy and regulatory frameworks can have in sustainable urban energy transitions. Presentations focused both on high-level policy and regulatory mechanisms, as well as technology-specific interventions in the urban sphere. The morning presentation from Vincent Agaba of the Real Estate Agents of Uganda was particularly relevant, in offering a property developer’s perspective in the sustainable transitions space, and the definitions of enabling environments in the space for developers. The afternoon saw Simon Batchelor from Gamos conduct a Netmapping exercise, a tool which the organisation has developed over many years, to identify the key stakeholders in the urban energy space, both in the partner municipalities outside Uganda and in Jinja and Kasese, as well as within the city

Day four of the course was centred around the theme of “Build(ing) Resilience”, with presentations focusing on designing and building with people, as well as ensuring resilience in design and sustainability. Key themes covered in the presentations included environmentally conscious design, with cases from local as well as international buildings, presented by Mark Olweny of Uganda Martyrs University, as well as innovative outreach initiatives for building support for sustainable energy transitions, and the use of the tourism sector as a driver of sustainable transitions, presented by Herbert Candia of Uganda Martyrs University.

The SAMSET Project will be hosting a third and final CPD course in Accra, Ghana from the 26^th – 30^th June 2017. More information on the course will be available both on this blog, as well as the project website, and the project Twitter.

Daniel Kerr, UCL Energy Institute

Strategies for Sustainable Energy Transitions for Urban Sub-Saharan Africa – SETUSA 2017

The SAMSET project team is pleased to announce the hosting of the Strategies for Sustainable Energy Transitions for Urban Sub-Saharan Africa (SETUSA) Conference, which will be held at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) Conference Facility, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana from the 19^th – 20^th June 2017.

By 2050, it is envisaged that three out of five people from the estimated 2 billion population across Africa will be living in cities. Sub-Saharan African economies have grown 5.3 percent per annum in the past decade, triggering a dramatic increase in energy needs. Against this backdrop, it is estimated that by 2040 about 75% of the total energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa will be in urban areas with its associated implications on sustainable development.

Given these challenges on sustainable development, solutions for sustainable energy transitions in the Sub-Saharan African region are extremely important, and likely to have wide-ranging consequences on the sustainability of the region’s economies. This reality also imposes an urgent obligation on the continent to consider sourcing more of its abundant renewable energy resources to ensure long-term security of energy supply. Particularly, renewable energy resources — solar, wind, organic wastes – and their corresponding technologies offer more promises for sustainable energy futures than the conventional energy sources.

Therefore, there is the need first of all to raise awareness on renewable energy options and energy efficiency opportunities in urban areas, and to promote strategies which will maximise their benefits in providing secure, sustainable and affordable energy to meet the rising energy demand in the region’s fast-growing cities. Secondly, there is also the need for national as well as local government planners and policy makers to understand local urban contexts so that they can grasp the significant opportunities of engaging at a local level, as well as acquire the critical set of capacities and skills necessary to drive and influence the uptake of clean energy and efficient technologies.

The conference aims to bring together social scientists, policy-makers and entrepreneurs in the urban clean energy sphere, to discuss strategies for moving Sub-Saharan African economies to a more sustainable energy transition pathway. We are inviting papers on energy efficient buildings, energy efficiency and demand-side management in urban areas, renewable energy and energy supply in urban areas, electrification and access to modern energy in urban areas, waste to energy in urban areas, spatial planning and energy infrastructure in urban areas, energy and transportation in urban areas.

SETUSA Final Call for Papers (PDF)

Details of the call for papers and other information, can be found on the conference website: www.setusa.isser.edu.gh

More information on the SAMSET project can also be found on our homepage: www.samsetproject.net

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Town Planning

Bernard Tembo from UCL writes on the benefits of bus rapid transit (BRT) systems and their integration into new urban planning ventures.

In our last article, Africities, 2063, and Time, Simon Batchelor and Sumaya Mahomed looked at the disjoint in project timescales used by donors, CSOs etc. and the municipalities. They elaborated the complexity process and stages that projects have to go through for them to see light of day, stating that instead of the commonly used timescales of 1-3 years, most municipalities’ projects have a longer timescale of between 10 to 30 years. This article gives an observer perspective on how town planning approvals and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in South African cities link.

Major South African municipalities have embarked on projects that will not only improve the efficiency of the transport network but also reduce emissions from the transport system. Municipalities such as Durban, Polokwane, Johannesburg and Cape Town are implementing BRT projects.

In Polokwane for instance, this project targets the areas that are densely populated. These area is currently serviced an inefficient public transport network and private transport. The City experiences loss of man-hours during peak time because of traffic jams. The City therefore, hopes that by providing a safe, reliable and efficient public transport network, the citizens’ social and economic livelihood could be improved.

SAMSET team members and bus rapid transit lanes on a highway in Polokwane, South Africa. Image: Hlengiwe Radebe, SEA

The City of Cape Town on the other hand has an already functioning BRT system, not covering the whole City though. One of the objectives of this system is to encourage modal shift: from private to public transport system. In one section of Cape Town called the Northern Suburbs, there a new shopping mall called Bayside Mall. This mall is serviced by a well-functioning BRT system. However, despite availability of this functional public transport system, the shopping mall has a huge private car parking space (lot).

This raises questions about how well coordinated internal City development approvals and plans are: on one hand you want to encourage use of public transport yet on the other incentivising private transport system. It is an established fact that building infrastructure such as malls have a long life span (more than 40 years). And secondly and perhaps more importantly that because without putting in place stringent measures, private transport will continue to grow in the City. As private transport offers better safety and convenience for the user. Apart for convenience and safety, private transport is perspective as a symbol of esteemed status. With an increasing middle‑class, most transport users particularly those with enough disposal increase to shop in places like Bayside Mall will most likely desire to use private transport.

It would therefore be important that the City authorities relook at requirements for new developments before they approve building plans. One such requirement would be size customer parking space in shopping malls. I am aware that they are a lot of power and political games at play with such developments (shopping malls that is) but there is always a first.

This is an interesting challenge of synchronising long term plans with short term desires. A challenge that cannot be solved using a one size fits all approach, it requires consented efforts from all stakeholders.

Energy and Sustainable Urban Development CPD Course – Day 4

This blog is part of a series on the Energy and Sustainable Urban Development in Africa course , 17 – 21 November, 2014, University of Cape Town. For more details on the purpose of the course, see this blog.

Day four of the CPD was dedicated to the interlinked themes of urban planning and transport energy consumption, as well as introducing themes on policy planning for urban development.

The day began with two presentations from the technical and policy side of urban form and urban planning. Dr Nancy Odendaal, University of Cape Town began with an introduction on thinking about urban planning, covering the history of urban planning development in Sub-Saharan Africa, from colonial concepts of urban planning to modern considerations, such as dealing with urban sprawl. Urban planning was defined as methodology for societal development, re-imagining an urban region or wider territory, priorities for investment, conservation, infrastructure and land use. Dr Odendaal also made clear the fact that urban planning is not restricted to city planners, and planning occurs in all spheres, therefore it can be clearer to refer to the planning system, rather than planning activities. A different kind of urbanisation, that of modern development, requires a different kind of planning – 62% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa live in slums, and 60% work in the informal economy – 78% in Francophone countries. Informality is no longer the exception, yet city planners often still see informality as illegality.

Professor Ivan Turok from the Human Sciences Research Council continued this theme with a presentation on the current state of urban and urbanisations policies in Africa. A key assumption in planning is that the functional urban form is the foundation for everything else to be built upon, and dysfunctional urban forms perpetuate dysfunctional energy relationships. Despite a wealth of experience in the sector in the region (50 years of projects, 20-30 years of sectoral programmes, 5-10 years of cross-cutting urban policy development), the lack of shared experiences and cumulative learning has led to a lack of integrated strategies, which is a critical barrier for developing effective urbanisation policies. Some counter-examples exist in Ethiopia, with the Federal Urban Development Policy focusing on SME development and job creation for urban areas, and Morocco, where the Integrated Progressive Human Settlements program since 2001 has had a major impact on slum populations. A number of other African countries are developing urbanisation plans in the face of the urban energy challenge.

Participants at the Energy and Sustainable Urban Development CPD Course. Image: Melusile Ndlovu

The afternoon sessions focused on transport policy and development in an urban context. Initially linking to the morning’s planning sessions through a brief introduction of the Voortrekker Road corridor upgrading in Cape Town, Herman Pienaar, head of Planning at the City of Johannesburg, presented on the Corridors of Freedom project, and more broadly an introduction to corridor-based transport planning in an urban context. Johannesburg is connecting key economic nodes in the city with bus rapid transit corridors, and in an effort to create system sustainability, is also encouraging mixed land-use planning and a network approach to transport planning in the city. With sustainability and liveability of the urban built form the key goals of this project, a combined whole-system focus is seen as the most effective way of achieving this.

Dr Lisa Kane, consultant and Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Transport Studies, University of Cape Town, went on to present about challenges to transitioning to a lower energy and emissions transport sector through a broadly-focused presentation on transport energy use culture and perceptions, as well as policy momentum. A number of recommendations came from this presentation – for example, public road space for public transport as a policy, increasing vehicle occupancy to improve efficiency, challenging car culture as ‘inevitable’, and supporting civil interventions through the state. Some unexpected points also came from this presentation, for example that the emerging middle class and richer consumers are a valid policy focus, given the unsustainable energy practices endemic to this economic bracket (for example, single-occupancy private car use).

Finally on day four, Roland Hunter, consultant at Hunter van Ryneveld (Pty) Ltd and former Chief Financial Officer of the City of Johannesburg, presented on the relationship between transport and infrastructure in African cities. Transportation spending in Africa as a whole is three times higher as a proportion of gross city product than in Asian cities, approximately 21%. Despite this, some inappropriate solutions are still receiving large amounts of funding from national governments. For example in South Africa, 60% of national government transport subsidies go to the rail sector, whilst they carry only 17% of passengers. Minibus taxis carry 61% of passengers nationally, but receive 2.1% of total government subsidy. Fundamental points from this presentation are that spatial form is the determining long-term driver of transport usage and energy consumption, and transport policy should be as much about improving the patterns of transport demand to improve sustainability.

Ghana’s US$498m Power Compact Deal with the United States

Dr Simon Bawakyillenuo of the University of Ghana ISSER recently blogged about the signing of the second Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC), the Ghana Power Compact, worth US$498 million, for the Institution of Development Studies Globalisation and Development Blog. The full article can be found at: http://www.globalisationanddevelopment.com/2014/08/will-ghanas-498-power-compact-deal-with.html

 

How to Evaluate the Impact of Research Projects?

Xavier Lemaire and Daniel Kerr from University College London attended the first annual workshop of the Understanding Sustainable Energy Solutions (USES) Network, held at the Wellcome Trust, London, UK on the 8^th July 2014. The workshop was designed to give insights into how best to achieve impact and engagement with beneficiaries in the USES Network projects, which cover a wide variety of aspects of low carbon energy research in developing countries, from institutional networking assistance and business support, to technology dissemination for thermal and electrical energy, to institutional and residential energy efficiency. A number of sessions took place, with an aim to convey insights into how funders and research users engage with academic institutions and organisations conducting research; theories of change and the impacts, both potential and real, that past projects have achieved/failed to achieve; and how best to plan for and assess the impact of the USES projects, and what shared experiences could be brought to bear for the good of all involved projects.

The day began with three presentations on impact, engagement and theories of change. Ed Brown from Loughborough University, in conjunction with Alison Mohr from the University of Nottingham, led off with an introduction to the Participatory Impact Assessment (PIPA) methodology. Adrian Ely from the STEPs Centre at the University of Sussex, and Duncan Green from Oxfam also contributed via video presentations.

Of particular interest was the PIPA methodology for assessing impact, which seeks to identify the inter-linkages in the goals and priorities of all actors in research projects, for example funding agencies, research institutions, local and national governments, community organisations, NGOs and the wider population. Through identifying the synergies in these groups’ priorities and needs, the methodology hopes to provide a clearer insight into the potential impacts of research projects, and the methods needed to achieve them.

The following session saw a number of representatives from the Department for International Development and the Department for Energy and Climate Change, as well as the UKCDS and the Knowledge Transfer Network, conduct a roundtable discussion on the experiences of funding agencies and other organisations in engaging with research and researchers. Broad themes included the importance of quantitative measures of impact and results in the view of the funders and their objectives, as well as highlighting the divergence on timescales for results between public sector projects and research projects.

The whole-room discussions sessions that followed, as well as in the case study presentations, brought forward a number of recurring points. The importance of stakeholder engagement from the very beginning of a project  in achieving impact in research projects, particularly in developing country contexts, was consistently highlighted as a key factor. In-depth knowledge of local country contexts, as well as sectoral expertise in key project members, was identified as a useful factor in achieving project impacts. These factors, along with the targeting of invitations to actors based on their expertise, were also identified to be critical in the creation, funding and initial engagement of projects.

The final session focused on the proposed framework for reporting project impacts to DFID, and how shared experiences within the USES project could help to facilitate greater impacts for all involved projects. Finally, the day concluded with contributions from participants on how the USES network can support the involved projects, predominantly focusing around networking via social media and web networking spaces provided through the USES portal on the LCEDN website.

Roundtable session at LCEDN USES Network Meeting

Urban Energy Transitions – Uganda

Prof. Simon Marvin from Durham University reports on the Durham SAMSET team’s recent work in Uganda.

During March we undertook initial fieldwork in Kampala, Uganda as part of our work on developing a knowledge exchange framework for urban energy transitions in African cities [1]. The work had three main components. i): a ‘netmapping’ exercise to review the institutional landscape of the energy sector with local and national policy makers. ii) meetings with agents of local energy transitions from the NGO and private sector. iii) And dialogue with our Uganda partners on understanding the case study cities and sensitising the knowledge exchange framework to the local context. Three sets of issues emerged that will be important in shaping our future work programme in SAMSET

Restricted Capacity of Municipalities to Shape Energy Transitions

We met the Municipal Town Clerks – the equivalent of a Chief executive in UK – from our two case study cities.  These municipalities have few formal responsibilities for energy issues with policy making priorities and capacity being exercised at a national level – through the energy ministry and the actions of an unbundled energy system of generation, transmission and distribution. Consequently, there was very limited capacity in the local authority to focus on energy issues – with only one member of staff employed to deal with all environmental issues – including working on forests, wastewater etc.  While municipalities were concerned about a range of energy issues in their cities including high costs, disruption, health and air quality plus access of households to formal energy system  – there are few formal mechanisms for them to interact with, or shape, the energy system.

By-passing Municipal and National Context

Mapping the urban energyscape revealed a wide range of local energy initiatives around lighting, fuel-efficient stoves and a range of decentralised technologies.  But these responses were strongly dependent on the actions of external intermediaries – NGOs and private companies  – who worked with local households and community-based organisations to develop local energy initiatives.  What was striking about these was the ways in which these responses tended to connect to international financial mechanisms, agencies and particular national contexts involving private companies, universities and NGOs to a particular local context – household, sewage works etc. There was strong sense that these initiatives largely by-passed the municipal and national contexts within which they were inserted according to external priorities – a form of transnational governance of local energy.

“District Champion” Energy Response.

While the energyscape was incredibly fragmented there was one example of an energy strategy at a municipal scale in Kasese that WWF has chosen as the “ Champion District”[2].  The imitative involves working with a cross-sectoral partnership designed to accelerate energy access for off grid communities through cooking and lighting. A number of different pathways are being experimented with including working with not-for profit NGOs and commercial models.  A private solar provider had report significant up lift in monthly solar installations from 2 up to 400 a month after the scheme provided enhanced access to the market through CBOs.  In contrast an efficient stove NGO reported that the scheme had been less successful in providing access to households.

Solar lighting in Kasese © WWF-Norge/Will Boase

[1] http://samsetproject.net

[2] http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/uganda/

The Challenges of Low Carbon Urban Development

Mark Borchers from SEA comments on the C40 City Mayors Summit, held in Johannesburg in February.

There are plenty of ideas about low carbon urban development. These tend to circulate in policy documents, reviews and conference presentations. The challenge is to take these ideas and let them take root and gain life in the messy engine rooms of cities where the aircon may have been broken for many months, the average qualification basic, a receptionist painting their nails, the engineer gone and the finance officer unwilling to do anything new. It may take 3 months just to appoint a staff member; up to six months to issue a tender and appoint a contractor. I have heard of instances where money for retrofit of public lighting ended up paying staff salaries; and funds for solar water heating installation could not be spent as there was no engineer to sign off that the houses could structurally bear the load.

Scratch the surface, however, and there is also a wealth of experience, irreplaceable on-ground technical knowledge and institutional memory. I have also experienced, across almost every municipality in South Africa at least, a massive commitment to meet the environmental challenges facing us.

In February city leaders met in Johannesburg for the C40 City Mayors Summit. Political analysts Richard Calland and Jerome van Rooij (‘African cities need to work together’) posed the question: will African cities be able to ‘catch the wave’ of cities being “where it’s at” with regard to sustainable development and green-growth, given their fiscal and political/legal limitations? Not without a major gearing up, they conclude.

SAMSET aims to address this, following a model that has been enormously successful in South Africa to date: taking an sustainable energy/urban development idea, working on it hand in hand with city staff; when it hits a snarl-up, deepening the investigation, exploring a number of possibilities and moving closer to a solution – a programme of real intervention. As the work happens, the finance begins to flow in, the capacity to do the work expands, new offices develop and the institution reconfigures itself. Incremental, but potentially powerful.

Energy, the Built Environment and Future Cities

Alex Ndibwami of Uganda Martyrs University offers his thoughts on the Ugandan context for SAMSET and some information about Uganda Martyrs University.

Uganda Martyrs University was founded in 1993 as a not-for-profit, faith-based private university, and has since grown, now registering a total of just over 4,500 students on different programmes and in different campuses across Uganda.  The main campus in Nkozi has a total of 1450 students.

The Faculty of the Built Environment situated at the main campus in Nkozi aims to be relevant to the current and future needs of developing countries, and to educate outstanding individuals with design creativity and technical competence, through a project-based integrated teaching approach, that integrates design with the techniques and practices of construction, structures, materials and building services within a theoretical and historical context, keeping in mind social, physiological and cultural needs.  The Faculty recognises that in a continuously changing built environment, professional experience and research are important contributors to achieve its mission.

Alex Ndibwami, Mark Olweny and David Mann are working on the project from Uganda Martyrs University.  Alex’s main research focus is on user behaviour in the built environment, how this impacts on sustainability, and user behaviour in energy use in buildings. Mark and David will be assisting Alex, bringing their expertise in energy efficiency and thermal performance of buildings; and sustainable urban planning and transport planning, respectively.

SAMSET and the Wicked Problem of Sustainable Energy – First Steps

Adrian Stone from the University of Cape Town’s Energy Research Centre offers his thoughts on the initial network meeting for the project:

The Supporting Sub-Saharan Africa’s Municipalities with Sustainable Energy Transitions (SAMSET) project’s first network meeting was held in beautiful Tanzania at the end of October 2013. SAMSET is a essentially a collaborative effort between people in very different places with quite different skill sets and backgrounds looking at the ‘wicked’ problem of sustainable energy use in cities. Not just any cities but some of the fastest growing cities in human history. Recently the annual lecture of the South African Academy of Engineers quoted Horst Rittel’s 40 year old definition of wicked problems, “The kinds of problems that planners deal with – societal problems – are inherently different from the problems that scientists and perhaps some classes of engineers deal with. Planning problems are inherently wicked.” City scale problems are of course essentially planning problems.

The Energy Research Centre’s input to the study is mainly around energy system modelling which perhaps has limited potential to actually solve this wicked problem of sustainable energy use in the face of massive and growing demand but is important for laying down a foundation of solid science for decision makers. The country partners that will be working with us from Ghana and Uganda are respectively economists and architects, as yet unfamiliar with the tools, so we anticipated a challenge in initiating collaboration across disciplines. The meeting of engineers, economists and architects however proved to be quite fruitful and a wealth of useful data and insights were presented that lay a good foundation for proceeding with model building in 2014. The first network meeting, from our perspective, was therefore very successful in letting teams get to know one another, show their strengths and start colouring in some perspective on the nature of the problem and its challenges.