Alianza Shire, Spain’s first multi-stakeholder partnership for humanitarian action, yesterday presented the results of a recently completed energy access project for the refugee and host populations of Dollo Ado, a remote area in southern Ethiopia hundreds of kilometres from the electricity grid and without access to basic infrastructure.

The partnership is formed by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Innovation and Technology for Development Centre of the Technical University of Madrid (itdUPM), the acciona.org Foundation, Signify and Iberdrola, having the collaboration of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and co-funding from the European Union.

Thanks to this project – co-financed by the European Union through the AECID– electrification work based on photovoltaic solar energy has been carried out, which has contributed to mitigating the lack of access to energy in homes, irregular access to community services (such as schools or health centres) and the lack of lighting at night in the refugee camps of Kobe and Hilaweyn, two of the five camps in Dollo Ado.

With a working model based on public-private-social collaboration, a solar mini-grid that supplies 16 community centres, 207 solar street lights and more than 1,700 home photovoltaic systems have been installed, improving the living and employment conditions of some 55,000 people in refugee and host communities. In addition, innovative management models have been designed to ensure the sustainability of the solutions implemented.

With more than one million refugees, Ethiopia is one of the world’s leading host countries and the third largest in Africa. The five camps in Dollo Ado – Bokolmanyo, Kobe, Buramino, Hilaweyn and Melkadida – located in the Somali region of Ethiopia, host more than 218,000 refugees from Somalia. In the face of such population displacements, access to energy is one of the main priorities, as it enables access to other basic services such as education, health, livelihood generation, security, etc.

Renewable energy solutions and their impact on the population

The project deployed by Alianza Shire partners – facilitated by AECID in collaboration with itdUPM – has involved different solutions based on renewables and aimed at solving the lack of access to energy: an isolated solar mini-grid, 207 solar luminaires for street lighting and more than 1,700 isolated photovoltaic systems for access to household electricity service.

Developed under the coordination of Iberdrola, the mini-grid (125Wp / 161kWh) has been installed at the Kobe refugee camp and is providing stable power to up to 16 community centres, such as health facilities, schools and administrative buildings, as well as supplying electric cooking in five schools.

Its design has followed the principles of an energy community, where the beneficiary institutions participate in the decisions as co-managers of the energy produced. This solution is making it possible to respond to the problem of frequent power cuts that prevented the correct functioning of critical services for community life, and is benefiting some 9,500 people.

In Kobe, 207 solar luminaires have also been installed, which are illuminating several of the paths in the refugee camp and its host community. Donated by the Signify Foundation these lighting solutions have an integrated panel and battery that allow them to store the solar energy they receive during the day and illuminate the paths as soon as night falls, without the need to deploy wiring.

Thanks to these luminaires, which have been located with the participation of the local population, especially women and children, the percentage of public spaces illuminated has increased from 13% of the territory to approximately 45%, and some 38,000 people are safer after dark.

Finally, through coordination with the Acciona.org Foundation, in Hilaweyn – where 98% of households had no access to electricity – more than 1,700 third-generation home photovoltaic systems have been distributed and installed, which are providing electricity to the homes of some 13,000 people, both refugees and the host community.

The model of household electricity service provision deployed in Hilaweyn, designed to last over time, as its management remains under the responsibility of the local partner Save the Environment Ethiopia (SEE), is the result of an adaptation to the humanitarian context of the rural electrification initiative ‘Luz en Casa’, which the acciona.org Foundation implements in different countries, and which is based on the idea of service provision, with the monitoring of the operation and maintenance of the systems. In this way, the use of electric light, some electrical appliances or the charging of mobile phones, as well as their positive impact on the economy, education, productivity or the environment of the beneficiary communities, can be sustained in the long term.

The overall project has been implemented in coordination with the UN Refugee Agency and the Ethiopian government agency Refugee and Returnees Service (RRS).

Sustainability and partnership work, cross-cutting themes of the Dollo Ado project

In each of the energy solutions implemented in the Kobe and Hilaweyn refugee camps, the aim was to ensure not only the quality but also the sustainability of the installation over time.

To this end, innovative economic and management models have been designed, based on multi-stakeholder collaboration involving the coordination and engagement of local organisations such as the NGO SEE, the energy cooperatives in the two refugee camps, the Ethiopian government agency Refugee and Returnees Service (RRS), and the refugee population and host communities themselves.

In particular, the Hilaweyn and Kobe energy cooperatives play a key role in these models. These are two local companies formed by refugees and host communities, trained in the management and maintenance of energy solutions, and financed through the payment of small fees by the beneficiaries – be they institutions or individuals – which in this way become jointly responsible for the energy solution installed.

The design and implementation of the various energy solutions and management models is an innovation in the field of energy access in humanitarian contexts, and has been made possible by the private sector and public institutions working closely together in the framework of Alianza Shire.

This project was selected as a good practice at the first Global Refugee Forum.