Desirable or debatable? Putting Africa's decentralised solar energy futures in context

Abstract

After decades of terrible ecological impacts, inefficiencies, corruption, and spatial injustices associated with dependencies on both centralised power generation and distribution in Africa, decentralised solar photovoltaic (PV) electrification is presented in the literature as an ‘irresistible’ alternative or complement necessary for a just, development-oriented and low-carbon energy transition. Affordable decentralised solar energy systems, however, currently have restrictive usage whereas systems with a larger capacity are accessible to a few richer social groups. The massive promotion of decentralised solar electrification does not even guarantee energy justice for all. This is due to contested notions of entitlements to and use of grid-based and off-grid electricity, relative spatial advantages or disadvantages, practical constraints linked to the pursuit of low-carbon energy solutions – particularly in situations where people/governments do not feel (morally) obliged to make commitments to climate change mitigation, and monopolistic tendencies of electricity distributors/suppliers. Furthermore, many electricity users in Africa lack the technical know-how and financial resources required for efficient self-organisation of decentralised solar PV electrification. Meanwhile, paradoxically, global north actors championing low-carbon energy technologies in Africa are sustaining their economies via massive use of fossil fuels – a behaviour referred to as ‘energy bullying’. Nonetheless, these quandaries should not be taken to imply ‘throwing away the baby with the bathwater’. Evidence presented from four idiographic cases suggests even that though context/country-specific conditions are decisive of the desirability of decentralised solar energy systems, certain general conditions necessary for the wider development of the technology in Africa are still discernible.