Built on LEAP-RE programme implemented between 2020 and 2025, the LEAP-SE action will organize 2 co-funded calls steered by European and African funding organisations. The Calls Steering Committee (CSC), gathering all funding organisations involved in the action, will select the projects to be funded considering the specific national eligibility and funding rules of each funding agency (nationality of beneficiaries, TRL, nature of beneficiaries, thematic scope, etc.). It should be noted that, even if the overall scope of LEAP-SE enlarges to all sustainable energy fields matching the CCSE scope on energy (including the multiannual roadmaps of LEAP-RE and the enlarged to green hydrogen issues) it will still be possible for funding agencies to focus their specific action on their own priority lines, in term of thematic focus or on TRL level. LEAP-SE draws on the experience and partnership developed in LEAP-RE. This partnership is further strengthened by a much larger number of African organisations/countries participating to the co-funded calls and by previous collaboration between partners in other projects supporting the EU-Africa HLPD on STI, such as LEAP-Agri, ERAfrica, LEAP4FNSSA, RINEA, CAAST-Net Plus and FOSC. It will work with other European partnerships such as CETP and DUT. LEAP-SE will also ensure the follow-up and monitoring of the funded projects, the valorisation of the results and clustering activities will ensure a broad dissemination of projects outputs reaching a global coherence among funded projects and avoiding fragmentation. The high-level dialogue foreseen with policymakers and institutional stakeholders will ensure that LEAP-SE has access to the relevant instances to raise any policy or regulatory issue hindering the deployment of some innovative solutions.

Gathering 11 African-based partners and 17 Europeans with offices or subsidiaries in Africa, the ENERGICA project is ambitiously fostering the collaboration between partners of both continents on energy access and sustainable energy development. Developing innovative and tailored solutions on productive use systems through innovative nano-grids in rural Madagascar in WP4; low-tech efficient biogas system, coupled with water purification demonstrated in peri-urban Sierra Leone in WP5; and solar powered e-mobility solution for boda-boda in urban Kenya in WP6, ENERGICA addresses a wide range of issues and provides solutions. From energy production, local renewable value chain development and e-mobility also providing flexibility services to the grid, ENERGICA is applicable to many different technical and socio-economic contexts. Built upon local stakeholders and through a co-creation methodology that will take additional local stakeholders’ inputs into account (WP2), ENERGICA aims to reach a powerful market uptake and wide replication (WP9) during and after the end of the project, with strong environmental and socio-economic local benefits (WP8). The innovative business models developed in WP7 will support this movement for local market uptake while some of the solutions will even rely upon local production and manufacturing, and local business and workforce participating to capacity building activities (WP3). Developing solutions that are based on renewable energy (mainly solar and biogas), and studying projected climate change impact evolution in Africa, ENERGICA will strengthen the joint EU-AU climate change and sustainable energy partnership effort and contribute to fighting climate change as well as improving health and social conditions in the demonstration sites and beyond. ENERGICA will demonstrate its solutions and gather data for 24 out of the 48 months that it will last and will directly impact positively more than 1500 local stakeholders across Africa.