Clean energy product markets in sub-Saharan Africa: Complex market devices and power asymmetries

Abstract

Low levels of access to modern energy services in sub-Saharan Africa combined with increasing awareness of climate change have made domestic-scale sustainable energy products, such as solar lanterns and improved efficiency cookstoves, popular within international development programmes. Following the turn towards private sector approaches to deliver basic services in the global South, many organisations of different types are trying to establish market infrastructure for these energy products to reach the ‘consumers’ they are designed for. This paper examines certain socio-technical arrangements within these market systems and identifies areas where they can inadvertently reinforce inequalities along the value chain, even if consumers are finally reached. Responding to Çalişkan and Callon’s call for more research into marketisation processes and drawing on the concept of ‘market devices’, the paper identifies three market devices as case studies: warranties, carbon credit frameworks and product standardisation tools with related certification schemes. Discussion of these devices is informed by ethnographic research in Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.