While the analysis and recommendations in this toolkit pertain to Francophone West Africa, the resources contained here include policy ideas, example parliamentary questions and model documentation that should be of interest to legislators worldwide - as well as others working in the energy sector. They were formed in response to the needs of members of parliament in three countries: Benin, the Ivory Coast (sometimes referred to here in the French: Côte d’Ivoire) and Senegal. These countries were chosen partly because the renewable energy industry findsitself at very differentstages of development
in each country, as the reader will note on reviewing the included short extracts from the ‘baseline studies’ commissioned as part of the project. They were also selected on the basis of the European Commission’s priority areas, UNDP’s parliamentary development projects and the regional political context - as well as considerations of language and cohesion. The range of policy contexts has enabled us to discover a broad range of policy tools to nurture an industry that offers both a solution to the climate emergency and a pathway to provide access to modern energy services for the hundreds of millions of people who still don’t have so much as a lightbulb in their homes.