The Swedish Embassy in Harare has signed a major agreement to support UNICEF in the second phase expansion of its Green Innovations Hub (GiHub) program aimed at boosting renewable energy in Zimbabwe.
The GiHub project, which began in 2015, is an incubation space that aims to ignite social change by inviting young people to develop creative solutions that can contribute to sustainable development.
Through the GiHub project, young entrepreneurs have been invited to come up with ideas for sustainable products and services that promote renewable energy, environmental sustainability and help fight climate change.
According to Swedish Ambassador, Sofia Calltorp, this is the first program the Swedish Embassy is signing under its new 5 year strategy – and the first that will address environmental sustainability and renewable energy challenges in Zimbabwe as well.
The GiHub presents for youths in Zimbabwe a unique opportunity to address the dual challenge of climate change and youth unemployment in the country.
It rides on four key elements; capacity building in the area of environmental sustainability and renewable energy for young people and children, Provision of an incubation and acceleration financing facility to test ideas as well as technical support for scale up, Support to in-school young people to nurture innovative approaches to community challenges, and Cultivating the culture of environmental stewardship among the youths and SMEs and contributing to climate change mitigation.
UNICEF Representative Dr. Mohamed Ayoya said that the energy demand in Zimbabwe is growing gradually at a rate of 2% per year, while access to the same remains low at 40%. He added that some of the barriers to this are finance and technology, issues which the project seeks to address.
With the funding from Sweden, this second phase of the project will further engage the initially funded projects and also recruit more entrepreneurs from those who submitted their ideas in the initial call.
Mass media campaigns will invite more submissions, and to encourage greater gender equality in business, the program will also pay specific attention to young female entrepreneurs.
The next phase, which is planned for June 2017 shall also include the placement of 20 youth innovators into private sector organizations for a period of one year to green their value chain and environmentally mainstream their operations.
