Project Description
Lighting GLobal is the programmatic support infrastructure underpinning IFC's off-grid lighting programs globally. It represents the best practice learnings of the Lighting Africa pilot. Building on the success of the Lighting AFrica pilot, IFC is replicating
the Kenya pilot across AFrica (in partnership with the World Bank) and into Asia and MENA.
As IFC expands its work in this area, the activities which are common across all country programs are coordinated and managed through Lighting Global. These
include
the product quality assurance function, the support for a self-sustaining industry association (GOGLA), collaborative relationships with global industry, multi-lateral, and NGO partners, and efforts to establish with the industry end-of-product
life recylcing
and disposal systems to address the new waste stream created by proliferation of solar devices.
Central to Lighting Global will be a strategy of building the institutions in the market which can take on the roles that IFC has played
in catalyzing this
nascent global market. Thus, Lighting Global will manage a process for spinning off ownership of the Lighting Global product quality standards, and the testing and certification of products, to a consortium or institution with the technical
capacity, global
footprint, and insitutional mandate to administer quality assurance for the growing industry in a sustainable way.
Lighting Global will also provide the institutional support with knowledge tools and quality assurance to ensure the
appropriate design
and successful implementation of IFC's growing portfolio of country off-grid lighting programs in Africa, Asia and MENA. As the learning hub, Lighting Global will support capacity building within the World Bank Group and across the Sustainable
Energy For All
network. It will also enable efficient delivery of IFC's country programs by connecting country teams to ensure sharing of tools, expertise, personnel, and experience, between program teams.