Abstract:
Solar lighting has become the primary lighting source for households within
rural Malawi, where many households remain off-grid and are unable to afford
the purchase of large, independent power systems. However, this success has
not been without its challenges. The paradox is that, historically, even the lowest
cost systems require an initial investment beyond the means of low-income
households, and hence necessitate the use of expensive and exploitative
financing options, such as those offered by micro-financial institutions. In
this study, we explore in a case-study, how one solar company, Yellow, has
overcome this structural inequity by combining three low-cost technologies,
namely pay-as-you-go, mobile money (MoMo), and cloud-based services
(XaaS), to develop a novel platform, referred to as Ofeefee, which is able to
deliver products into a market characterized by a weak retail infrastructure and
low purchasing power. The result was better quality lighting at a lower levelized
cost than traditional technologies. In so doing, the paper highlights the
importance of thinking not just in broad energy access terms but the
importance of discriminating between energy and lighting to disaggregate
the needs of energy poor communities more appropriately.
