Integrating energy systems and supply chain optimisation for sustainable development: Decentralised, Energy-Leveraging Transformation of African Development (DELTADev)

A considerable part of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is related to energy issues. However, a majority of countries in sub-Saharan Africa suffers from energy poverty with adverse consequences for economic development. The EU-funded DELTADev project intends to develop a bottom-up strategy for rural development in several energy-poor case studies across sub-Saharan Africa. The project will place energy systems planning into a broader sustainable development context by adopting various SDG targets as optimisation objectives. Specifically, it will integrate energy systems planning with the optimisation of rural productive supply chains, yielding a common modelling platform capable of designing these systems according to cross-sectoral development objectives. By capitalising on energy-enabled development, this approach holds the promise of intrinsically increasing energy access and rural development, lowering the need for foreign development finance.