Fairtrade Inclusive Energy Fund
Fairtrade Inclusive Energy Fund
Key Data
Uganda, the Fairtrade Inclusive Energy Fund (IEF) is established to adaptively scale access to energy solutions into new SPO and HLO settings while prioritising project co-creation and bottom-up solutions. The IEF is thus a vehicle to allow for project ideas that advance access on cooperative and individual farmer level. For this purpose the IEF offers different support streams such as training of agents to create a link to trusted sources of solar energy systems, after-care service agents to provide support to the sold and installed systems or financial officers and accountants focused on setting up the loan systems for the purchase of solar energy systems. These streams are accompanied by farmer field days (member-focused awareness events) and road shows (community awareness events) where vetted solar products are improved and awareness of quality vs. generic products is increased. The overall objective of the IEF is to establish both (1) new tailored inclusive financial products and (2) inclusive off-grid energy products for use by cooperatives and their members.
There are two key innovations within the IEF approach. The first is that trust must originate from producer and worker organisations. These are the entities who initiate project ideation and development thus ensuring that solutions have buy-in, ownership and sustainability. This
is in line with the second innovative element, i. e. the IEF building on and catering to the wide Fairtrade network, which itself is a system of trust, checks and balances.- Energy Access
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