Third, because the power supplied is likely to be utilized for agricultural production, access to renewable energy can, if coupled with capacity-building and training, trigger the progressive greening of agriculture and agro-processing, thereby creating new development and trade opportunities. Many such projects and programmes are being implemented in a good number of countries, generally in collaboration with international development partners. However, the number and scope of such programmes will have to increase if the number of rural poor is to be significantly reduced to levels that allow the attainment of the MDGs by 2015. In this regard, major development partners6 have recommended that energy services be explicitly addressed in planning for poverty reduction (Modi et al., Half of the people who currently rely primarily on traditional biomass for cooking should switch to alternative fuels, such as LPG or electricity.