Abstract
Access to reliable electricity eludes many poor rural Afghan communities despite plentiful renewable resources. Micro-generation seems particularly well suited to Afghanistan’s mountainous, decentralised society but even with substantial investment since 2001 it has not lived up to expectations. Recognising the causes are likely to dwell in the human (rather than technical) domain, this study takes a qualitative, soft systems approach to deriving and validating the necessary conditions that might improve the success rate of micro-generation projects in enabling sustainable economic development. It acknowledges the governance limitations inherent in fragile states and the significance of the community as the most stable element of society, putting the latter at the centre of its thinking. Those conditions identified as critical are summarised as: a holistic approach that sees micro-generation as a component of broader economic development; an environment safe enough for project build and operation, and for the markets necessary for wealth creation; and external support to build community capacity to fund and maintain schemes through-life. These conditions are likely to have relevance for other fragile states; the next step is to develop them in the field before deployment as part of a comprehensive approach to poverty alleviation in Afghanistan and similar states.
Highlights
Afghanistan scores poorly against almost every development indicator including access to electricity
Its unique contribution lies in its methodology and its perspective: it will take a soft systems approach to understanding, from a community viewpoint, the necessary conditions for micro generation to successfully support economic development in rural Afghanistan
This study addresses micro generation’s contribution to economic development
Summary
Afghanistan scores poorly against almost every development indicator including access to electricity. Since 2001 Afghanistan has been at, or near, the top of the development agenda for many of the world’s most affluent nations [1] Those states, having committed military forces, followed strategies that viewed rural development and counter insurgency as indivisible [2]. It is too early to judge the success or otherwise of Western efforts in Afghanistan but rural development, including access to electricity, remain important factors in the viability and development of the Afghan state. Progress in those sectors has not lived up to expectations; a recent national survey found access to electricity to be the second biggest “local” concern amongst the rural population after unemployment. To extract candidate conditions for successful micro generation; (3) To validate findings by comparing model outputs with real-world studies; (4) To elicit the critical and desirable conditions for successful micro generation in rural
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