Aims and Activities
The African Renewable Energy Technology Platform (AFRETEP) aims at building a network of African research institutions dealing with renewable energy.
The AFRETEP is one of the activities foreseen within the project "Scientific and Technical Support to Sustainable Energy Development in Africa: Rural Electrification, Renewable Energy and Communication". The project is funded by the European Commission. The overall objective of this project is to contribute to understand the potential for renewable energy options in Africa for increased access to electrification in rural areas.
Within the framework of the project, DG JRC has been developed a platform with 830+ African and European members, cooperating institutions for research (AFRETEP); provided nearly hundred African academics in regional trainings on the state-of-art rural electrification technologies; developed mapping applications and methods to support national governments and agencies to decide which energy technology options would better deliver their goals of rural electrification and made these available to the continents scientific communities in publications. The methods -developed by the JRC platform- take into account the diversity of energy resources, coupled with the existing grid, transport infrastructure, hydropower resources, the current diesel and photovoltaic costs, to map the current least-cost electricity options for rural electrification. These results are available on the capacity4dev energy community. As requested by many users the developed geographical datasets have been made publicly available in this website and as well as the related published papers and conferences that have facilitated the spread of the results to the interested stakeholders.