Procurement Notices

The Sahel region, which comprises of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal wields tremendous but untapped opportunities and economic potential. It is considered as one of the richest regions in the world, with a diverse cultural heritage, the world’s youngest and fastest growing workforce, and abundant in natural resources including minerals and great potential for renewable energy. It also stands to tremendously benefit from emerging development opportunities such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, the Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, and the Single African Air Transport Market. The rise of digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and blockchain technology provide new opportunities to generate new and decent jobs, accelerate financing for Small and Medium Enterprises, help reduce poverty and foster social, economic, environmental and governance transformation.

However, the Sahel is the most unequal and vulnerable region in the world. Challenges such as persistent poverty, high inequality, high underemployment, narrow economic base, severe climate change, weak governance, and chronic violence continue to drive extreme levels of vulnerability in all dimensions of sustainable human development. Not only do they put millions of livelihoods at risk, but they also lead to forced displacement, increase human rights violations, constrain humanitarian access, leave communities without essential assistance, and expose aid workers to increased risks.

The negative effects of exogenous shocks from climate change have had a significant impact on the Sahel region and its people. Rising temperatures (projected to rise by between 2.0^o C and 4.3^o C by 2080), rising sea levels, declining precipitation and water availability, heat-related mortalities, lingering poor health effects and pollutants from cooking with biomass fuels, and conflicts arising from scarcity are part of the myriad of challenges facing the region.

In addition, the high cost of fossil fuels and the high dependence on unsustainable sources of energy places significant pressure on households, government budgets and economic security, especially for import-dependent energy users. Furthermore, the dependence on imported energy exposes the region to supply shocks and pass-through inflation from global shocks.

Currently, the 10 Sahel countries continue to face a severe energy crisis, with half of the population (168 million people) lacking access to electricity while 89% of the population (298 million people) lacks access to clean cooking technologies and fuels. The energy deficit has far-reaching consequences, preventing both the provision of quality basic services like healthcare and education, and effective business development, in a context already marked by insecurity, multidimensional fragility, and vulnerability to climate change and other shocks.

For the Sahel to reach its development potential, access to energy needs to be dramatically increased, in a way that ensures the sustainability, affordability and equitability of energy services. With the region’s renewable energy potential, there is an opportunity for the Sahel countries to leapfrog to a more sustainable energy pathway for new energy generation and progressively transform their energy systems away from traditional fossil-fuel based solutions. For it to happen and bring all the expected benefits, this energy transition needs to make economic sense and be “just”, putting human development at its center.

The proposed Sahel HDR will undertake an extensive review of the Sahel’s sustainable development progress with emphasis on the contribution of energy as an enabler to the achievement of the SDGs goals. With an overview of the last decade and an analysis of domestic and external impediments, the energy sector evolution in the Sahel region will be assessed and its contribution to human development and SDG achievement evaluated.

The possible trajectories of a sustainable energy transition for the Sahel will be investigated considering the potential offered by the discoveries of gas and other fossil sources of energy in the region. The trade-off between the exploitation of fossil fuels (in particular natural gas) for development needs and the fight against climate change will be at the heart of the definition of possible energy transition trajectories towards the achievement of the SDGs.

The Sahel HDR will be focused on three main topics:

·         Human development trends in the Sahel

·         Sustainable energy transition trends in the Sahel

·         To analytically model human development futures of the Sahel under different energy transition dynamics and scenarios using prospective model.

·         To provide concise and practical recommendations for national governments, regional organizations, and global development partners for better planning and management of challenges and opportunities in the region.

The 2022 Sahel regional HDR will provide a comprehensive review of the region’s sustainable development progress in different dimensions and provide clear policy guidance to put the region back on track towards achieving human development. The analysis will be based on prospective model that presents different scenarios to explore a set of alternative futures, based on differentiating assumptions around the consequences of today’s events and policy decisions on medium to long-term development across a wide set of indicators and topical domains in the Sahel. The model will allow the comparison of a business-as-usual scenario based on current energy and climate change trends in the Sahel vis-à-vis alternative scenarios that consider different energy transition mixes for the Sahel to achieve the SDGs and the Agenda 2063 goals. The report will shed light on the different policy options to accelerate progress towards more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient development in the Sahel as well as strategies to navigate potential obstacles and make the most out of emerging opportunities.

Objectives of the service/work

1. Provide human development trends across the region under different scenarios focusing on energy transition questions. 
2. Undertake an analysis of different energy mix transitions scenarios for the Sahel with a prospective (future foresight) model considering different energy mix transition for the region. Three scenarios could be considered. First, a scenario that pursues a current path of development that is largely fossil fuel-based considering the natural resource prospects for the Sahel in the coming years. Second, a scenario that reflects a significant investment in renewable energy, but investments that are over-weighting development goals over sustainable ones. A third scenario could focus on developing the underlying enabling environment that would allow for renewable energy investments to work synergistically with other development dynamics, leading to overall improved human development and reduced carbon emissions.
3. The comparison of these scenarios will help in exploring the ways in which different sustainable energy transitions play a critical role on long-term human development trajectories for the Sahel region.