Assessment of community sustainable livelihoods capitals for the implementation of alternative energy technologies in Uganda – Africa

Abstract

Abstract Sustainable livelihoods approach is progressively being applied in feasibility assessment for implementation of alternative energy technologies in developing countries. In this study, an evaluation model for assessing the sustainable livelihoods capitals, namely, social, natural, financial, physical and human capitals by utilizing interpretive structural modeling approach and MICMAC analysis is proposed. The study’s emphasis was centred on evaluating the current status of the community’s sustainable livelihoods capitals and predicting the impact of implementing alternative energy technologies on the community’s capitals. The proposed model was used for the case of Uganda, a developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa and the modeling results revealed that currently social capital and financial capital at 0.482 and 0.460, respectively, are the most developed sustainable livelihoods capitals in Uganda. The evaluated average value of 0.401 for the predicted current status of capitals by the proposed model is in close agreement with previous studies’ findings. Also, of the evaluated alternative energy technologies for implementation in Uganda, rooftop solar PV systems emerged as the best option followed by ground-mounted solar PV systems. The proposed model is replicable and applicable for any location with the utilization of the appropriate datasets of that location under consideration.