Energising Development (EnDev), the energy access partnership currently financed by six donor countries - the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Sweden - says energy access is at crisis. That comes as no surprise to many….. They led a global survey of the off-grid energy industry to date representing feedback from more than 600 companies across 44 countries which provide energy access through mini-grids, clean cooking solutions, household solar products, and appliances.

As 85% companies fear for their survival beyond a period of more than five months, many jobs are already lost, and remaining ones at risk. This situation is more evident especially with smaller companies and distributors. “The crisis has reached a critical stage for most of the companies, with severe impacts on employment and ultimately on livelihoods. 35% of companies have already laid off 30% of their staff; additional staff will be laid off in the next few months if no immediate support is available” the report claims.

For us here at Simoshi. with schools still currently closed, many of our activities have become dormant. Others, such as our second verification exercise planned to take place in December 2020, had to be cancelled. Nevertheless, we have continued with the marketing and sale of our carbon credits, because this is done on-line, and because thankfully many stakeholders had continued to voluntarily offset their carbon footprint. This has allowed us to divert some of our programmes as we await for a “normalisation” of school attendance.