Komal Hassamal

Komal Hassamal has over 16 years of experience working in the climate change and development – in 28 countries on the African continent across multiple sectors such as renewable energy, transport, agriculture, and ocean. Komal has held positions for leading multilateral organizations – the African Development Bank and the UNDP – and worked with multiple bilateral donors and UN agencies. Komal has extensive field experience from working and residing in North, West and SIDS of Africa for almost 12 years. Her track record spans from programme/portfolio management on transition to clean energy to designing infrastructure project, setting up climate funds, and developing climate related strategies (Nationally Determined Contributions, resource mobilization) to advise government, international partners, private companies and civil society to advance the Paris Agreement for countries to cut emissions that cause climate change and adapt to climate impacts.

The last five years, Komal has worked as an independent consultant on multiple assignments :

• advising the FCDO in the design interventions of the £500 million Blue Planet Fund that will reduce poverty and protect the marine environment in line with the UK’s International Climate Finance commitment,
• designing projects for the UNDP Flagship energy access programme ‘Africa Mini-Grid’ (for the remote areas of Madagascar, Niger, Sao  Tome and Principe & the Democratic Republic of Congo) which addresses the issue of millions of people without access to electricity centered around the falling hardware costs, using disruptive digital trends (mobile money, data, communities of practice) and innovative private sector business models. She led partnership between UNDP and AfDB institutions working on the off-grid green minigrid energy access themes,
• overseeing the implementation in the challenging countries of Congo, DRC, Central Africa Republic advancing investment in small hydropower-based mini-grids to provide electricity services to the rural areas and formulate an appropriate business model that will ensure the sustainability of mini-grids based on small hydropower development in the other areas of the country. It will do so to supply electricity services to an equal number of villages through mini-grids for income-generating activities and household/community use,
• designing and raising concessional finance for the $900 million AFDB Green Mobility Facility for Africa initiative to scale private investment in the green public transportation sector.

She spoke in high level conferences at the London School of Economics during the Africa Summit, A guest speaker for the Africa Leadership University MBA Programme, represented the AfDB at the Africa Smart Mobility Conference on her experience on climate change issues, planning, data and finding opportunities on how to mobilize financing.

Komal has degrees in Master’s in Business Administration from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et Université Paris-Dauphine and a Postgraduate in Investment Appraisal and Project Management from the University of Bradford, she is a Certified Expert in Climate and Renewable Energy Finance from Frankfurt University School of Finance & Management and possesses Training on Climate Change from Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

She is committed to simplify the access to climate funds and to ensure the right development finance flows to the most needed. She is passionate about sustainable development, gender equity and having a positive impact on people’s lives. She brings her experience in climate change in Africa to Trustworks to reinforce the nexus with peace building in fragile context.

After being in large capitals such as Brussels, London, Montreal, Tunis and Abidjan, Komal is now recently based in Mauritius.

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