This book evaluates off-grid solar electrification in Africa by
examining how political, economic, institutional, and social forces
shape the adoption of off-grid solar technologies, including how issues
of energy injustice are manifested at different levels and spaces. The
book takes a historical, contemporary, and projective outlook using case
studies from pre- and ongoing electrification communities in non-Western
countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, Malawi, Tanzania, and
Nigeria. Beyond the diverse nature of these countries in terms of their
geographical location in West, East, and Southern Africa, each offers a
different experience in terms of colonial history, economic and
institutional infrastructure, social and cultural context, and level of
adoption of off-grid solar technologies. Notably, the book contributes
to the off-grid solar and energy justice scholarship in low-income
non-Western contexts. It examines various approaches to energy justice
and does so by engaging with Western and non-Western philosophical
notions of the concept. It takes into consideration the major principles
of Ubuntu philosophy with the adoption of off-grid solar technologies,
hence enriching the energy justice framework. Finally, the book
interrogates the degree to which the social mission that catalysed the
expansion of the off-grid solar sector is being undermined by broader
structural dynamics of the capital investment upon which it is reliant.
It also argues that the ascendance of off-grid solar electrification in
Africa is transformative in that it enables millions of people without
access to or facing uncertainties linked to centralised grid energy to
have access to basic energy services.
