The Developing Energy Enterprise Project is an EU funded programme involving six of GVEP International’s partners, EAETDN, the Aga Khan Foundation’s Coastal Rural Support Project, Kenya, IT Power East Africa, Emerging Market Economics-Africa, Practical Action East Africa and Gender and Energy Research and Training. The kick off meeting was held in Kampala in March 2008, and the first follow up session was in Nairobi at the end of April.

The GVEP International led initiative brings together private sector expertise, community mobilisation and business management in the development of private businesses, from their inception as ideas in villages to established energy service providers and employers.

The programme is being implemented by local partners working with the GVEP-I regional office in East Africa.
Some of the activities carried out in the 12 months to March 2009 are described below:

* Stakeholder discussions: A total of 111 coordination meetings took place with staff from related national and local government, international agencies, NGOs and the private sector. In addition, 16 kick off seminars were organised. The essence of these meetings and contacts was to look at opportunities of potential collaborations with partners and organisations as well as establishing grassroots network of small and micro energy enterprises, both start-ups and existing businesses.

* Development of Methodology and tools: The project staff finalised various tools focusing on Initial energy business idea generation, due diligence of sustainability, a Business Plan workbook and Business Development Support training reports

* Awareness raising with the existing small business communities: meetings with local communities provided them an opportunity to discuss their energy usage as well as allowing DEEP team members to present the provision energy services as a business, and discuss the potential for diversification of energy services. A total of 156 meetings were conducted with communities and business communities.

* Sustainable development due diligence on initial enterprise ideas and on business ideas generated:. this stage of GVEP International activities provided an opportunity to work with serious potential and existing entrepreneurs who want to enter the energy business. Firstly, potential entrepreneurs were taken through the process of idea generation and then a template was used to screen the business and allow the selection of the most viable option. Over 500 business ideas were screened by this process in 2008/9.

Business proposals included the following areas (non exhaustive):

- Solar energy for mobile phone charging, barbers and hairdressing salons in rural areas,
- Improved cookstoves;
- Briquette production;
- Sustainable charcoal production;
- Small hydro power generation schemes;
- Wind power generation.

Recruitment of business support mentors: a total of 22 recruitment seminars (6 in Kenya, 7 in Tanzania and 9 in Uganda) took place during the period and were attended by 108 possible mentors. 79 mentors were selected, trained and matched with relevant entrepreneurs.

* Provision of energy technical and business support advice and training to SME Entrepreneurs: a total of 256 entrepreneurs had received training (approximately 44% women) in the three countries (Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya) by the end of March 2009.

* Monitoring and Evaluation and Scale-up: the baseline for the areas targeted for intervention was done in the three countries in 2008. The exercise mapped the existing energy businesses in the region to enable the project team to take strategic decisions for on-going activities. A total of 590 enterprises were mapped during the exercise.

For more information on the DEEP project, please contact Kavita Rai at infodeep@gvep.org.