Africa’s energy sector is vital for sustainable development of the region. However, Africa remains one of the most poorly understood regions within the global energy system. Although Africa has energy resources more than sufficient to meet domestic needs, more than two-thirds of its population does not have access to modern energy. The effective development of Africa’s energy resources could unlock huge gains across the economy. However, the current energy policies and systems have not adequately provided the platform needed to support the economic development for the majority of African countries. The important considerations that need to be prioritised include facilitation of equitable access of energy services by mainstreaming gender issues in the entire energy value chain, and designing a robust appraoch to localize, in particular, clean energy technologies to support Africa’s economic transformation agenda.

It is against this background that ECA and AUC are jointly organising an Ad-hoc Expert Group Meeting (AEGM) to validate the findings of the joint AUC/ECA's study on "Gender Mainstreaming in Implementation of Bioenergy Development in Africa” and ECA's study on “Localisation of Clean Energy Technology in Africa: The Case of Biofuel Technologies”, in Kigali, Rwanda, from 02^nd to 04^th December 2014. This meeting is expected to review the findings of the two studies, and provide sector country-specific experiences across the continent. In doing so, the AEGM would create a deeper understanding of the concept of gender mainstream in assisting to elevate the role of women in rural energy infrastructure development in particular, as well as putting forward a radical transformative paradigm in line with the African industrialization vision through energy technology value chain analysis. Experts from seventeen African countries will attend the event. African regional organizations dealing with energy development issues will also be represented at the meeting.