Ben Garside Email & Phone Number

London, United Kingdom

I have developed a portfolio of research and implementation programmes with partners in the public and private sector as well as advocacy engaging a diverse set of stakeholders across multiple countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Chile, and Nicaragua. In my current role, I head IIED’s energy team, with responsibilities including: S̲t̲r̲a̲t̲e̲g̲y̲ ̲L̲e̲a̲d̲: building the portfolio of work on impact focused renewable energy use e.g. I developed a people centred inclusive and cross-sectoral energy service design approach, leading an at-scale use of it in Kitui County Kenya (1.2 million people). This resulted in the most comprehensive County Energy Plan produced so far in Kenya (securing follow-on funding to support implementation in Kitui) and winning a 3.4m Euro TA consortium facility supporting devolved County energy planning across Kenya. I also adapted the approach for the humanitarian sector, working with multiple UN agencies to develop innovations in remote support for field use during the challenging times brought about by Covid-19 – resulting in direct benefits for refugees. T̲e̲a̲m̲ ̲l̲e̲a̲d̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲p̲a̲r̲t̲n̲e̲r̲ ̲m̲a̲n̲a̲g̲e̲m̲e̲n̲t̲:: recruiting and strengthening capacity the energy team as well as oversight of work programmes which engage a wide variety of partners e.g. managed multi-country research in to different public and private models to catalyse off-grid financing across East Africa, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Well received by the World Bank and others, this helped secure follow-up climate finance workP̲o̲l̲i̲c̲y̲ ̲&̲ ̲A̲d̲v̲o̲c̲a̲c̲y̲:: policy briefings and messaging for IIED, and helping others to message e.g. I co-founded, helped secure funding for, and am on the steering committee of the Alliance of CSOs On Clean Energy Access (ACCESS). The biggest Global South civil society grouping on energy access, ACCESS is formally recognized by the SDG7 process, World Bank, AfDB and others.

London, United Kingdom

As a senior researcher I progressed to co-lead the energy team. Examples across this role include:P̲r̲o̲g̲r̲a̲m̲m̲e̲ ̲m̲a̲n̲a̲g̲e̲m̲e̲n̲t̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲s̲t̲r̲a̲t̲e̲g̲y̲ ̲d̲e̲v̲e̲l̲o̲p̲m̲e̲n̲t̲ e.g. led an advocacy programme on a €2m project for better access to decentralised energy in Nigeria; developed a new approach to bottom-up energy service delivery and leading a programme to test this in the field in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (in 2019 this is being adopted at scale in Kenya). R̲e̲s̲e̲a̲r̲c̲h̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲a̲d̲v̲o̲c̲a̲c̲y̲ e.g. conceived and organised events to message research findings and create spaces for informed dialogue. Energy access events include: country-level policy dialogues (e.g. multi-stakeholder dialogue processes on productive uses of energy and accountability in the energy sector in the 'Energy Change Lab' initiative in Tanzania), as well as international events (e.g. the Rio+20 conference, European Development Days, COP, and the Sustainable Energy for All Forum). M̲o̲n̲i̲t̲o̲r̲i̲n̲g̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲e̲v̲a̲l̲u̲a̲t̲i̲o̲n̲ e.g. I have led the monitoring and evaluation component of the energy team, developing frameworks for improving monitoring and impacts of energy access initiatives – for example linking investors to community energy projects in South Africa. I have also led developing an M&E framework to push forward thinking and action on ‘social learning’ – an approach to drive co-learning for change for better impacts when adapting to climate change.

London, United Kingdom

In my first role at IIED I built experience through a combination of research and partner engagement on ‘re-governing’ agri-food value chains for the benefit of poor farmers – including analysing the barriers and opportunities that different types of agri-food standards have on small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also developed an online platform (in a pre-facebook era) which empowered partners in the Global South to post their own content, helping to reduce hub-spoke North-South power issues. I worked for a month in Chile exploring communications issues of grassroots waste-picker cooperatives in Chile, helping the Latin American network enhancing impacts using social networking tools and identify approaches to improve business models for waste that were inclusive of the informal wastepicker networks.

Responsible for design, implementation and deployment of operational support systems to manage the Interoute European network; for example, an Order Management system and an integrated flow-through provisioning system to enable Interoute soft-switch customers to provision routing information to a voice and VOIP soft-switch. Formulated requirements and business processes for an extensive expansion of the billing system.

London, United Kingdom

As technical manager in a fast growth telecoms company, led a group of software developers on a variety of telecom network facing projects for Level(3)’s backbone network division. Being part of an international enterprise I was actively involved in cross-functional management, architecture decision-making, project-planning and recruitment roles. An example: a global project involved managing a team split between the US and UK to design a data collection and reporting suite for Level (3)’s dialup internet access solution.

Msc, Development Management

Master Of Engineering (Meng), Electrical And Electronics Engineering