UOMA, founded in 2017, is a dedicated and neutral intermediary, focused on accelerating the growth of off-grid energy access in Uganda to enable universal energy access. It was borne out of a partnership between the Shell Foundation, DFID and USAID / Power Africa under their Scaling Off-Grid Energy: Grand Challenge for Development (SOGE) partnership.

Since 2017, our activities have focused on expanding access to finance for solar operators and reaching unserved populations in Uganda, while also supporting productive use technology and strengthening the enabling environment for off-grid energy uptake. Our efforts have led to increased affordability, improved access for low-income households, economic benefits for off-grid users, and accelerated progress towards universal energy access through better resource allocation and coordination within the sector. UOMA is managed by a team of technical experts with experience across many areas of off-grid energy, finance, business, policy & regulation, and development economics.

Along with our many successes in our 2017 pilot year, we acknowledge that more is still needed to address market gaps in scaling off-grid energy in Uganda. For this reason, we have planned for a three-year extension of the Market Accelerator (2018 through 2020).

The Market Accelerator must be adaptive to the changing needs of the market – focusing to overcome new barriers as they arise and coordinating with new stakeholders as they emerge. The goal is for the Market Accelerator to maintain a relatively consistent level of capacity over the next three years, but to focus resources on areas of greatest need and where the accelerator can be most impactful. The goal is that as the Market Accelerator empowers other organizations on certain workstreams, capacity shifts to new areas.