Zambia is home to a highly dispersed population, with more than 60% of people living under the poverty line, and some 70% of whom have no access to modern energy. Neither the national utility nor energy service providers had been able to effectively deliver energy to rural and peri-urban areas, hindered largely by a lack of capacity and investment, including into the range of new technologies and solutions around distributed, off-grid energy services powered by renewable energy.
In 2016, the Power Africa: Beyond the Grid Fund for Zambia (BGFZ) was launched to help support private sector-led energy service provision and stimulate the local energy market, with the ultimate aim of connecting one million Zambians to modern energy services. Today the Swedish-funded programme is on track to connect 1.6 million people – or 13% of the population – by 2021.
