National Technical Coordination Committee Meeting (NTCC) and Quarterly Review Meeting, South Africa

The NTCC meeting was convened at the Protea Hotel Fire and Ice in Menlyn Pretoria on 10th March 2016 and chaired by the Mr. Tlou Ramaru, SWITCH Africa Green National Focal Point from the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). The meeting had about 20 participants including the EU, DEA, CSIR, NCPC, DAFF, EDD, DTI and DST.

The main objectives of the meeting were to:

1. To update the NTCC on progress in implementing the Switch Africa Green project as it had been some time since the last NTCC which was convened in 2015.
2. To discuss how to strengthen coordination of the programme with a view to improve monitoring of project implementation.
3. To validate the national Implementation Document

The South Africa NTCC has not been meeting as frequently as required, it was agreed that the final terms of reference would be circulated and regular dates for NTCC meetings would be set. Mr. Mapako and Ms. Matumba from CSIR presented the final draft of the SWITCH Africa Green Inception and Implementation report for South Africa.

The committee pointed out that the report needed some improvements on specific interventions that were to be prioritised by SAG to promote SCP. It was agreed that these would be prioritised in the synthesis report to be compiled by UNEP using the 6 country implementation documents. The grantees were also introduced to existing SCP tools that could be used in greening the business.

Questions were raised on the definition of MSME within the SWITCH Africa Green project. It was indicated that focusing on micro-enterprises was possibly not the optimal approach for South Africa, it was agreed that South Africa could also focus on small and medium enterprises.

The grantees presented the progress in their projects, it was noted that the grantees in South Africa need to fast-track the selection of MSMEs that they will be working with. It was also agreed that some quarterly review meetings would be held in Cape Town, as 50 per cent of the grantees are based there