Solar Power and its Discontents
Critiquing Off‐grid Infrastructures of Inclusion in East Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7744152 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jane Cro (0000-0002-0721-0786), Tom Neumark (0000-0002-0205-3881) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 902-926 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Development and Change (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0012-155X • E-ISSN: 1467-7660 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/dech.12668 |
| OpenAlex | W3176354594 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 42 |
| References cited | 46 |
Since 2010, solar energy companies in North America and Europe have played a pivotal role in delivering clean, reliable and sustainable electricity to millions of people living off the grid across sub‐Saharan Africa. However, today, off‐grid solar energy in Africa is no longer seen as an unmitigated social and economic good. Inflows of private equity investment have led the employees and customers of off‐grid solar companies to question the industry's commercial dynamics. Their critiques address the mis‐selling of solar home systems and the technical limits of off‐grid infrastructures for domestic production, framed both by dominant market paradigms and by relationships to nation, community and family. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in East Africa's off‐grid solar industry, this study assembles these critical perspectives into a wider analysis of off‐grid solar power as an adverse ‘infrastructure of inclusion
Business · Distributed generation · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Electrical engineering · Electricity · Equity (law) · Geography · Grid · Grid parity · Inclusion (mineral) · Political science · Power (physics) · Renewable energy · Social science · Sociology · Solar Power · Energy and Environment Impacts · Engineering · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Water Governance and Infrastructure
“We can’t have people begging in the street, when we have oil.” Moral entanglements and gestural politics of Africa’s green energy transition
Disrupting the Grid
Leapfrogging the Grid
Curious Utopias
Yours, mine, and ours
Can Private Equity Deliver on Its Societal Ambitions? What We Know and Don't Know About Environmental, Social, and Governance Factor Integration in Private Equity
Escaping poverty
Limits of energy access research on unreliability
Energy and water infrastructures management under energy transition pressure in mineral extraction urban and rural areas
Left in the dark
The good payers
Stumbling blocks for solar social enterprises
Solar aporias
Corporate-led approaches to affordable energy
Doing ownership’ in sustainable energy innovation
Harnessing the sun for agriculture
Why do capabilities need Ubuntu? Specifying the relational (im)morality of energy poverty
Illuminant intersections
Bringing light, connectivity and waste to local communities
Governing the scalar politics of solar energy
The informality-energy innovation-finance nexus
Equal goods, but inequitable capabilities? A gender-differentiated study of off-grid solar energy in rural Tanzania
From promise to pitfall? How interventions by non-governmental organizations can exacerbate energy vulnerability in Colombian off-grid communities
Misty sunrise
Stakeholder perspectives on the future of clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa and the role of pay-as-you-go LPG in expanding access
Gulu’s grassroots energy pathways
Green imperialism, sovereignty, and the quest for national development in the Congo
Off-Grid Electrical Urbanism
When sustainable development competes with African Ubuntu
Laboring for light
Coastal encounters with electrical hybridity
Antinomies of Green Fintech
Limits of the corporate-led market approach to off-grid energy access
Conceptualising energy geographies in East Africa
Interconnection, Obligation, Solar Power, and the Remaking of Energy Citizens on and off the Grid in California
Ghostly energy futures amidst the imperial ruins in Eastern Indonesia
Rethinking the geographies of finance for urban climate action
The right to repairable energy
Where the power lies
The afterlives of off-grid solar
Reaching millions
From Multiple Deprivations to Exploitation
Money from Nothing
Planetary Improvement
How Would You Like to Pay?
Poverty Capital
Short-Term Impacts of Solar Lanterns on Child Health
Do Solar Lamps Help Children Study? Contrary Evidence from a Pilot Study in Uganda
Poverty as Ideology
Markets of Dispossession
Somewhat original
Desirable or debatable? Putting Africa's decentralised solar energy futures in context
The afterlives of solar power
Solar energy for all? Understanding the successes and shortfalls through a critical comparative assessment of Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and South Africa
The rise of solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa
Connective Power
Emerging Low-Carbon Energy Landscapes and Energy Innovation Dilemmas in the Kenyan Periphery
The solar good
Remaking Africa's Informal Economies
Entrepreneurship as the New Common Sense
Investing for profit, investing for impact
Capturing Crisis
Citizenship Prepaid
Trusting the Poor
Energopower
The 100th object
The financial inclusion assemblage
Traveling Technologies
Modal reasoning in Dar es Salaam's power network
A good neighbour is not one that gives
Selling with Prejudice
Credit Apartheid, Migrants, Mines and Money
Introduction
Asr Forum
| Unique citing works | 42 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 38 |