Good news for Madagascar. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Opec Fund for International Development (OFID) have signed a joint declaration to deepen their partnership to ensure access to energy and promote the energy transition. The big island is the first beneficiary of this partnership through a funding of 1.5 million dollars.
The grant is intended to provide technical assistance to Madagascar’s Clean Cooker Transition Program. The funding will also support detailed studies and pilot projects for the program. “As a first step, UNIDO is working with Ofid to expand the use of clean fuels and technologies to improve the health and living conditions of communities in Madagascar. This partnership will make a difference as we plan to deploy clean cooking solutions in 500,000 households in five cities across the country,” explains Gerd Müller, UNIDO’s Executive Director.
Slowing deforestation in Madagascar
According to him, UNIDO and the program partners will also develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for the implementation and measurement of development results. Such an initiative could be replicated in other African countries seeking to accelerate access to clean cooking.
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Launched by the Malagasy government, the Cleaner Cooking Transition Program aims to promote more environmentally friendly cooking through the use of clean coal, biogas, ethanol, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). According to government projections, the program will enable 55% of Malagasy households to adopt improved stoves by 2030.
This transition is also expected to save 8.2 million tons of wood. In addition to financing clean cooking, Tananarive aims to restore 500,000 hectares of forest degraded by logging by 2030. This is an ambitious commitment that OFID is supporting with a $36.5 million loan. According to official data, the abusive use of wood for energy is one of the main causes of deforestation and degradation of the natural forests of the big island, whose coverage has dropped from 9.4 million hectares in 2005 to 9.2 million hectares in 2010, a reduction of almost 40,000 hectares per year.
Jean Marie Takouleu