Rural renewable energy MSMEs operating to modernize agriculture in Sub Saharan Africa: Barriers, opportunities, and implications for inclusive low-carbon transition

This project aims to explore the transformative potential of rural renewable energy MSMEs in modernising agriculture, by addressing the critical gaps in understanding their adoption of low-carbon technologies, particularly among women and youth. The objective is to generate evidence-based policy recommendations on best practices for overcoming barriers to resilience and adapting MSMEs to climate change, as well as to enhance women and youth’s inclusion in low-carbon agricultural value chains.

It combines a focus on identifying locally-tailored and inclusive policy solutions and deploying rigorous impact evaluation (using experimental or quasi-experimental methods) to understand the barriers to an inclusive, enterprise-led decarbonisation of agriculture. This includes establishing, for each country, the key challenges in adopting renewable energy-based agri-tech solutions, the social inclusion potential of the technologies and the likely scalability of the technologies.

The Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) and Environment for Development (EFD) will support in-country project teams working in collaboration with agricultural MSMEs and policymakers to design and assess strategies tailored to each country’s unique needs and circumstances.