The future of sustainable development in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rests on its ability to manage its diverse environmental ecosystem and forest reserves. But like many other developing countries, the DRC’s forest resources are under pressure.

The country is home to the world's second largest tropical forest massif after the Amazon with nearly 155.5 million hectares of forest (R. Eba'a Atyi, N. Bayol, 2009). Forests in the DRC (60 percent of the Congo Basin) are rich in animal and plant biodiversity (5th in the world) and provide important goods and services (non-wood forest products, timber, wood energy, bushmeat, traditional pharmacopoeia, etc.) on which the lives of thousands of rural people depend.

Population growth, poverty, poor governance and the administrative deficit are the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation in the DRC.Biomass resulting from fuelwood logging remains the principal source of cooking energy for more than 90 percent of the population in the DRC. Households and street vendors rely heavily on charcoal (or firewood) for daily cooking (87 percent in Kinshasa). Companies, such as bakeries, breweries, restaurants, brickmakers and forgers in aluminum, also depend on firewood or charcoal for their daily work.

The volume of the woodfuels market in Kinshasa and Kisangani alone exceeds the official volume of national wood production by more than 12 times. As the population increases and neigbhoring countries like Rwanda’s conservative wood policy prevent domestic consumption, there will be increased pressure on the remaining North and South Kivu forests.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s clean cooking market incubation programme aims to reduce reliance on wood fuel as a clean cooking energy source. This will be done by supporting the distribution of improved, efficient cooking solutions (that consume less-to-no wood fuel). In 2019, UNCDF established a locally-based team of clean energy experts, who embarked on a detailed market scoping. This included business health and investment readiness assessments of over 50 enterprises involved in clean cooking activities, and efficiency and consumer field testing of over 24 clean cookstoves, LPG systems and electric stoves to benchmark the quality of products currently in the market.

The scoping resulted in an incubation programme design that will use a Challenge Fund mechanism to put enterprises on three tracks:

1. Incubation via direct technical assistance or workshops
2. Performance-based grants
3. Concessional loans or guarantees.

This programme will be implement in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the REDD + National Fund (FONAREDD), and supported by the Central African Forestry Initiative (CAFI).

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About UNCDF work on Energy

The UNCDF programme focused on energy contributes to achieving SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy for all, and SDG 8 focusing on decent inclusive work, economic growth and, more specifically, financial inclusion. The Programme aims to improve access to clean energy finance for poor and low-income people. By partnering with energy and financial service providers and offering capital, data analytics, capacity building and policy advocacy services in the off-grid energy finance markets, UNCDF CleanStart has scaled energy business models for cleaner, efficient and more effective sources of energy for poor people. As of 2019, UNCDF digital energy finance activities have enabled over 375,766 low-income families and small-scale businesses to access renewable energy technologies (RETs) through micro and PayGo financing.