Africa-Press – Uganda. Uganda Energy Credit Capitalisation Company (UECCC) is engaging energy service companies operating within the solar space on a results-based financing programme under the Electricity Access Scale-up Project.
The results-based financing programme is one of the four programmes being implemented by UECCC under the financial intermediation component of the Electricity Access Scale-up Project.
If the deal goes through, UECCC will provide grants, price subsidies or price cuts to energy service companies to address upfront affordability barriers associated with the purchase of clean technologies for lighting, clean cooking solutions, and productive uses of energy.
Mr Roy Baguma, the UECCC managing director, said Ugandans will be able to access discounted products at counters of energy service companies with branch networks and agents spread throughout the country.
The programme will also provide higher incentives on a per-unit-sold basis to energy service companies, which register discounted sales in underserved and remote rural areas of Uganda.
“The subsidies will be refunded by UECCC to the energy service companies after an independent verification by an audit process confirming that sales have taken place,” Mr Baguma said, noting that the idea to use a digital platform obtained support from the World Bank, after which UECCC recruited a Germany-based digital company to provide a platform to enhance real-time information about the sales being closed by energy service companies across the country.
Mr Samuel Ocanya, the Electricity Access Scale-up project manager, said energy service companies must fully engage and understand the workings of the digital platform because they will be required to connect to the platform to onboard discounted sales.
Mr Mwaka Agoba, the programme manager of Results Based Financing and Clean Cooking, said result-based financing sales are expected to begin in July after energy service companies have signed grant agreements that will contribute towards market sensitization and awareness creation to support their sales efforts.
Mr David Ebong, the Clean Energy Partnership Africa chief executive officer, said the platform would be great for the transparency of the programme.
“The platform that has been created is user-friendly and makes it easier to capture data and generate reports. All energy service companies also have full visibility of the data they have captured, everything is done in the open,” he said.
The programme’s expected outcomes include increased use of clean energy for lighting, cooking and productive uses such as water pumping, irrigation, refrigeration and cooling, water heating and grain milling.
“This will eliminate negative environmental impacts such as green gas emissions, deforestation and poor health conditions associated with using traditional lighting and three stone cooking, and other open fire cooking methods,” Mr Ebong said.
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