Energy supply is particularly challenging in Solomon Islands given its relatively small population scattered across more than 90 islands spread across many thousands of kilometers. Solomon Islands is almost completely dependent on imported diesel fuel for generating power.  As a result, most households are reliant on less reliable, costlier and potentially dangerous alternative energy sources such as kerosene lamps, candles, and diesel-backed generators. This project supported the expansion of access to electricity across Solomon Islands through grid extension and the development of mini-grids, directly benefitting approximately 14,250 people in peri-urban and rural areas.

The project was successfully implemented with a total 2,480 number of household connections and reaching subsidy disbursement level of 99%.

The National Government adopted the OBA mechanism and the Solomon Power Company received over 1,300 new connection applications.

These will be addressed by the new World Bank project that will include an OBA component.

The ICR which will draw lessons from implementation is planned to be issued in September 2020.

Currently, the World Bank’s Energy and GPRBA teams are holding consultations with the Government of Solomon Islands and DFAT regarding the potential scale up of the OBA activities in the country. 

The project had two development objectives: (a) increase the capacity, efficiency, and quality of electricity supply; and (b) expand access to electricity in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. This additional financing enhanced and maximized the development impact of the Kenya Electricity Expansion Project (KEEP).  The project supported cost overruns related to the expansion of low cost base load geothermal resources in Kenya’s energy mix; scale-up of slum electrification across the country; and scale-up of technical assistance and capacity building for sector entities.

To support the Government of Bangladesh’s commitment to improve sanitation, the World Bank, through GPRBA, partnered with Palli-Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) to provide hygienic sanitation solutions to low-income households. The project combined output-based aid (OBA) with a blended finance approach. GPRBA contributed $3 million in the form of an OBA grant and leveraged an additional $22 million in the form of commercial sanitation loans from microfinance institutions (MFIs). The project modality sought to leverage four main actors, PKSF as the implementing agency and wholesale lender for MFIs, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with microfinance experience as retail MFIs, local entrepreneurs or construction firms as the service providers, and low-income households as the customers. The retail MFIs provided sanitation development loans to low-income households. These loans were set at a maximum size of 10,000 BDT ($128) in order to target low income households and were repaid over 55 weekly installments with interest set at a fixed rate of 10 percent. The OBA subsidy covered the cost of interest charged by the MFIs.

Bangladesh OBA Microfinance Sanitation Project - Evaluation Report

In FY19, GPRBA reviewed this project’s impact on market development in rural Bangladesh and assessed how much additional finance was leveraged because of these activities.

A workshop on the findings was held in Dhaka, with local microfinance institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other local sanitation actors.

The project successfully supported the construction of 170,679 latrines, surpassing its target of 170,000. Eighty-nine percent of the loan recipients were women. Aside from the direct outputs, a significant contribution of the project was demonstrating a viable and robust market for sanitation loans to both households and businesses. The use of RBF subsidies was a key contributor in creating the right conditions to engage the MFIs and customers. The project also developed a market for new sanitation and financial products.

Since completing this project, PKSF has developed a Sanitation Development Loan policy to extend hygienic sanitation to its retail MFI partner organizations. PKSF also allocated capital finance to support retail MFIs in five sub-districts to reach 100 percent sanitation coverage in their areas, supporting SDG 6: to ensure safely managed water and sanitation for all.

In the Philippines, despite strong economic growth, many Filipinos live just above the poverty line, cycling in and out of poverty due to high vulnerability to climatic, disaster, financial and price shocks. The government had a plan to achieve 90% household electrification in the next few years. Even though the government was on track to achieve this target, more remote and dispersed households in unelectrified areas lagged behind for various reasons such as being on isolated islands or conflict-affected regions. GPOBA supported targeting low-income communities in these areas to access electricity through solar-home systems,

 A decade and a half of successive armed conflicts in Liberia has devastated the national infrastructure, leaving access to basic services like electricity at practically zero. GPOBA supported, through at $10 million grant,  a project aimed at rehabilitating Monrovia’s power supply and rapidly expanding the roll-out of the network to a low-income households. Using an output-based aid scheme, the project was to help make access to electricity more affordable by subsidizing the connection cost and more inclusive by explicitly targeting the poor. 

Outputs: The project was successful in ensuring broad-based and inclusive access to electricity, and significantly improving living conditions among the poor.

At project closing, a total of 17,165 low-income households (= 83,695 beneficiaries) were connected to electricity in 21 low-income areas, exceeding the target of 16,806 households.

In Nigeria, over 1 million people or 0.8 percent of the population, are covered by health insurance schemes. Many poor people have to pay out-of-pocket for medical care or do without. The National Health Insurance Scheme, introduced in 2004, intended to cover all Nigerians, but many low-income populations are not expected to benefit for many more years. Through this GPOBA project low-income Nigerian families were planned to have access to affordable primary and maternal health care, as well as screening and treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The project provided affordable pre-paid health insurance plans for over 13,000 beneficiaries (employees and their families) who belong to the Computer and Allied Products Association (“CAPDAN”) at the Ikeja IT village in Lagos. The services was provided through a network of service providers managed by Hygeia Nigeria Limited, a local private sector health insurance entity. 

GPOBA’s water supply project in the Indonesia port city of Surabaya supported an output-based aid scheme to extend piped water connections to low-income households. Where possible, the project provided connections to the utility’s piped water network. For households not eligible for a network connection, the project supported innovative master meter schemes. 

Objective: to increase electricity access via solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to poor rural households in remote regions of Ghana where PV systems are the least cost technology option and grid service will not arrive for ten years or more. There were three components to the project.

1. Subsidies for solar PV systems: The project will fund output-based subsidies to private dealers for the sale, installation, and after-sale service for solar home systems of different sizes for rural households.

2. Transaction support: It is worth noting that the provision of technical assistance is consistent with emerging practices for off-grid electrification, which indicate that successful off-grid electrification projects require substantial accompanying technical assistance resources, both for the transaction and supervision, given that: (i) these are nascent markets, and (ii) governments typically lack experience and capacity to oversee these new transactions.

3. Project supervision by the Bank. Project supervision covers the work of the task team leader, the technical specialists, and the fiduciary and safeguards staff for the supervision of the Global Partnership Output-Based Aid (GPOBA) subsidies.

Outputs: The project increased access to off-grid electricity services in remote rural areas of Ghana through a blended financing scheme that facilitated loans to consumers. Using a dealer sales/consumer credit model, consumers accessed loans to purchase solar home systems and benefited from OBA subsidies, which made the systems affordable. The project supported the installation of 16,500 solar photovoltaic systems, 322 solar lanterns, and substantially increased consumer awareness of solar electricity options.

Ethiopia has one of the lowest electrification rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, with under 20 percent of the nations towns and villages electrified. GPOBA’s Electricity Access Rural Expansion project supported accelerating the pace of connections in electrified areas and fostering energy efficiency. The project provided a performance-based subsidy to the state-owned utility linked to the delivery of pre-agreed outputs, including the connection and provision of services on a sustainable basis to poor customers in rural areas.  

In Armenia, a country with severe winters, many low-income households cannot afford the cost of connecting to gas networks or heating equipment. To help families benefit from clean and efficient gas-based heating, GPOBA and the World Bank funded a scheme that provided grants to eligible poor households for individual or local heating solutions. Disbursement of the funds was tied to the delivery of pre-agreed outputs, creating incentives for the service providers to ensure timely completion of the installation work and early delivery of the gas or heat supply.