By Victoria Chengo, Kennedy Mbeva, Joanes Atela, Rob Byrne, David Ockwell, and Aschalew Tigabu.
Introduction
The Africa Sustainability Hub (ASH) has been running since 2015 and has aimed to showcase a model of transformative partnership that harnesses research and policy on the kinds of sustainable technologies and innovations which could inform Africa’s actions in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a crowded global research environment, the hub is a platform of international, trans-disciplinary action-oriented work with a strong focus on practical responses – including the development of new concepts, tools and methods. ASH has accumulated experience in low carbon transitions and expertise in low carbon innovation, as well as environmental policy and governance. ASH has also established strategic linkages with a wide array of stakeholders and actors, including the research community, civil society, government and development partners.
For the ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network (TKN) work, ASH has been pursuing action research focussed on enabling sustainable and equitable access to Solar Home Systems (SHS) for all via mobile-based payment systems, including those who cannot participate in micro-financing schemes. ASH, hosted at the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) together with the other members of the Hub – the Africa Research and Impact Network, African Technology Policy Studies (ATPS) network and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) – has continually aimed at gathering socially inclusive evidence on various sustainability pathways and sustainable technologies and innovations for low-carbon energy transitions that meet the needs of the poor. There has been a focus throughout on research that interrogates whether dominant business models create ‘pathways’ (towards enhanced access to clean lighting and cooking solutions for the poorest in Africa) (Ockwell et al. 2019).
The basis of the ASH work is built on fundamental sustainability questions in Africa’s energy transition journey. Despite efforts around renewable energy alternatives, these technologies have been limited in their penetration into the everyday life of society and especially the poor. For example, bio-digesters in Kenya and Rwanda had been installed at a rate of just 0.3% of the technical potential by 2010, mainly for cooking (Tigabu et al. 2015). This and several other projects are usually characterized by failures to attend to the social aspects of local cultural practices around energy consumption (standing up to cook, using specific-sized pots, etc.), or linked energy services (heating and lighting homes, repelling insects, etc.). With regard to lighting/electricity, even though there is increasing grid connectivity aided by the key government programmes such as the Last Mile Initiative, affordability and reliability of these connections remain a challenge to most people especially in rural areas (Atela et al. 2020). The offgrid solar home systems market has been growing fast, with the Kenyan solar energy market becoming one of the most advanced in Eastern Africa; however, the country is still not sufficiently exploiting its solar energy resources and associated utility pathways (Muok et al. 2015). As of 2015 (at the inception of this project), the leading mobile SHS firm in East Africa (M-KOPA) had just 180,000 households across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as customers (Fox 2015). The solar energy has mainly been promoted to replace some of the lighting options such as kerosene, but has not focussed on other utility options such as cooking, where a number of sustainability concerns still exist, given that most people, i.e. more than 70% of Kenyans still using biomass for cooking (Karanja & Gasparatos 2020).
In most of the energy transition efforts, large amounts of resources have been spent on assisting those at the bottom of the economic pyramid to transit from inefficient to efficient energy use, but with numerous sustainability concerns (Ockwell et al. 2019; Negro et al. 2012; Bhattacharyya 2012). We see the key issue here as the relatively techno-centric approaches to promoting the various renewable options in ways that create a path dependency of business models combined with a poor understanding of the socio-cultural and political contexts of these technologies in Africa (Gigante 2016). A pathway to a low carbon economy must be socially responsive and inclusive. More broadly, these technologies need to be integrated into the political economy of low carbon development at both national and regional levels (Newell et al. 2014).
This gives a broad problem space of the access to and payment of SHSs, in particular for low income households, with a goal of distributing and financing models that enhance the equitable access to SHSs. The technological innovations towards renewable energy access in Kenya have continually evolved, bringing about dynamic and varying framings of the problem space and associated transformation.
There has been a broad social recognition of the existence of a problem concerning pro-poor access to solar PV. However, according to the general public, there has been a limited social imaginary of the diversity of possible sustainable and equitable pathways, closing down futures across civil society. This is reflected in the wider media interest in pro-poor solar PV, which has only been addressed in generalities. There has also been a significant research gap around pro-poor solar PV initiatives, with a focus on just a handful of sites (Millan & Atela 2017), without attendance to mobile-payment systems. Likewise, the private sector has only approached pro-poor solar PV initiatives with a limited focus, generally failing to leverage research to assess model effectiveness, in particular around alleviating energy poverty.
The emergence of Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) micro-finance enterprises is an extension of the pico-solar market, which has developed within the already prominent solar PV market in Kenya that has been present since the late 20th century (Muok et al. 2015). Unsurprisingly, the benefit structure of the technology and business models has generated conflicts – should the entrepreneur or the low-income customer benefit, or both? And how, if at all, should SHS articulate with government strategies for grid-based electricity systems?
There has been little research on this problem space, but the Africa Sustainability Hub has had a long-standing reputation of mediating between research and policy dimensions, providing evidence-based research and policy analysis to enable the engagement of diverse actors. This means that ASH continues to support inclusive low carbon innovations in the space of a Kenyan population with low electricity access, high costs and low reliability. It has been our hope all along that providing a robust evidence base upon which to explore this challenge will facilitate the generation of innovative approaches.