Background
AGRA is a mission-driven organization that seeks to catalyze the growth of sustainable food systems across Africa by influencing and leveraging partners to build a robust enabling environment where private sector thrives and smallholder farmers are empowered to produce sufficient, healthy food. AGRA’s engagement and partnership with national and sub-national institutions in the continent has been a catalyst to enhance production and productivity as well as strengthening institutions in our target countries.
Agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa are underpowered, suffering from energy poverty, with only 40% of the population has access to electricity. Moreover, about 80% of those who do not have access to electricity in SSA live in rural areas. The 2019 Africa Energy Outlook predicts that, based on current and announced policies, African energy demand will grow twice as fast as the global average over the next two decades. Currently, a significant amount of the energy demand in Africa is covered by traditional solid biomass such as fuelwood, charcoal, and farm residues (including animal dung) in the world while only about 1% gained access to clean cooking options. Cooking accounts for more than 70% of household energy use in Africa. Access to reliable, affordable, sustainable, and modern sources of energy to prepare land, plant, harvest, process, distribute, store and cook food, will ensure that Africa’s food system can respond to this demand within the context of increasingly scarce natural resources. Lack of rural energy is also the major cause of land use and landcover change, exacerbating carbon emissions due to deforestation, and release of Carbon through burning and carbon losses.
Despite these challenges, there is still a general lack of rural energy development policies and strategies that focus on agriculture. Many energy policies and interventions in Africa focuses on the needs of industry, transport and urban infrastructures, whilst energy requirements are frequently overlooked for agriculture development. The potential that energy in agriculture has in accelerating development for millions of people that live in rural areas is high as this would, by extension, avail energy for rural development. Energy for agriculture needs to be prioritized more in rural policy and technology feasibility work in developing countries than has currently been the case. This would however require a paradigm shift in development policy to more strongly include energy for agriculture.
Sustainable agriculture requires an energy input at all stages of agricultural production such as direct use of energy in farm machinery, water management, irrigation, cultivation and harvesting. Post-harvest energy use includes energy for food processing, storage and in transport to markets. In addition, there are many indirect or sequestered energy inputs used in agriculture in the form of mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides, insecticides and herbicides. A wide range of energy forms, modern and traditional, are utilized on and off the farm such as tractors or machinery fuel, and in water pumping, solar irrigation and crop drying. Other energy inputs are required in post-harvest processing of food production, packaging, storage, transport and consumption.
Sustainable provision of energy and agricultural productivity are mutually reinforcing. Farmers and SMEs without access to sustainable energy are trapped in circle of low productivity whereas there is need for sufficient levels of commercialization of smallholder agriculture to attract and sustain renewable energy investment in rural communities. Energy is a key enabler for inclusive agricultural transformation. The duality of agriculture as an energy user and the potential it has as an energy supplier in the form of bioenergy places it in a unique category as an important sector in energy. This energy characteristic that agriculture has offers important rural development opportunities, including as one means of climate change mitigation through the substitution of fossil fuels with bioenergy. This call for consultancy focuses on generating key points on the centrality of mainstreaming rural energy development in Africa’s agriculture transformation agenda. The consultant will look at key challenges and opportunities of advancing modern energy technology, in a holistic manner, and the technical, environmental and economic advantages of strengthening the energy function in smallholder agriculture development, in particular.
Grid electrification into rural areas can catalyze social and economic benefits, but for many rural communities there is no immediate prospect of being connected to the central electricity grid, and other commercial energy sources are often too expensive for poor people. Off-grid and mini-grid technologies for hydro, wind, and solar power are disrupting African energy landscapes and enabling Africa’s consumers to leapfrog outdated and dirty technologies, which are becoming more cost-effective and efficient. Thus, it is fundamental that considerable effort is needed in order to take forward the energy-agriculture nexus. The technological, environmental and social dimensions need to be further developed and assessed. An integrated approach which exploits the dual role of agriculture as an energy user and an energy supplier needs further examination and investigation to be developed. The Agriculture – Energy nexus captures the interactions and complementarities, whereby the Agricultural security considers the availability of affordable agricultural commodities necessary for healthy, productive lives and profitable agricultural value chains, while the Energy security ensures access to clean, reliable and affordable energy for mechanization, storage, processing, cooking, heating, lighting, communications and productive uses. Beyond powering agriculture, availability of energy can transform rural areas into hubs of economic activity through other ancillary productive uses of energy - e.g youth fabrication of agricultural equipment.
AGRA is is looking for an International Consultant in establishing a context-specific agriculture-energy nexus and develop a roadmap to provide African small-scale farmers with affordable energy opportunities.
It is against the above background that AGRA seeks the services of an expert in ag-energy strategy development with an understanding of African agriculture and its context to support AGRA in the delivery of its strategy. The expert will work with and support the AGRA team to identify key intervention areas and related tracking indicators at country and regional level. The consultant will be required to draft a full agenergy 2030 strategy detailing analytics, identified intervention areas, measurable indicators and means of verification. For information about AGRA, please visit www.agra.org
Objectives of the assignment
The main objective of the assignment is to develop a roadmap to integrate it into AGRA’s 2030 strategy that would provide small scale farmers, particularly youth, with improved access to rural energy and map opportunities to accelerate green jobs in areas such as mechanization, water management, renewable energy for Agric and processing and agri services. The consultant will work closely with AGRA’s resilience and sustainable farming team, under the supervision of the Director of Climate Change, Sustainable Productivity and resilience at AGRA.
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