The GGKP's Seventh Annual Conference took place on 21-22 October 2019 in conjunction with the Global Green Growth Institute’s Global Green Growth Week 2019 (GGGW2019) on the theme of “Achieving Global Energy Transformation” in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Olivia Muza presented her paper “Disruptive Systems: The Role of Community Needs and Gender in Renewable Energy for African Rural Populations: What are the Priorities, Challenges and Opportunities” in A.2: Socially Inclusive Energy Transitions. Muza is a development economist currently conducting research on inclusive energy transformations in Africa.
1) Briefly describe the topic and conclusion of your research.
Today, around 2.8 billion people are dependent on traditional biomass for cooking with a crude or traditional stove. This has major health implications, with an estimated 3.2 million premature deaths per year linked to indoor air pollution from indoor cookstoves, particularly in off-grid rural communities in developing countries.
In these communities, the uptake of electrical appliances for other domestic activities and services remains low. This paper argues that local and social contexts largely shape the uptake of electrical appliances for cleaner cooking in terms of consumption, production and service, including other activites beyond the households. It spotlights a persistent gender gap in uptake of cleaner household appliances, and emphasizes the need to consider context when investigating the current supplier-user electrical appliance interface.
This paper also highlights the need to explore men and women’s preferences, ownership, and benefits from electrical appliances, and argues that this has not received adequate attention in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty alleviation (SDG1), gender equality (SDG5) and partnerships for the goals (SDG17).
In light of these findings, my research moving forward will focus on the local and social contexts that shape the uptake of clean energy household appliances and beyond (including the productive and service oriented activity appliances), and the development and uptake of new clean energy technologies.
2) What are the key policy messages and implications?
The preliminary results show a persistent gender gap in uptake of cleaner household appliances. It is crucial to understand the specific local context and constraints, the choices that men and women make, and the reasons behind their choices. How the social dynamics shape technological innovations is the novelty of this work. A socially inclusive bottom-up, consumer/user driven-approach is key to identifying the real world challenges for energy transition that will provide pathways to rural development through targeted poverty alleviation strategies and relevant implementation partnerships. The result is expected to reduce electrical appliances uptake constraints and provide wider variety of choices.
3) If applicable, briefly elaborate on the policy framework and financing mechanism.
The off-grid sector will most likely experience the most system disruption because it is the most underserved market. For this reason, my study focuses on a disruption narrative that also promotes system continuity, other than just bringing a change. Bringing the social aspects of technology innovation and uptake into the disruptive innovation theoretical frameworks allows for a balanced demand-supply analysis that better informs how the appliance uptake gender gap can be contextualized in research, policy and practice. However, a specific policy framework and financing mechanism are the subject of my forthcoming work and a subject matter for future discussions.
4) Are there any challenges from this research?
Studies on gender and electrical appliance uptake are generally quite rare, particularly in the African context. I have completed an exploratory research to observe what has already been done in the field and to determine the design and guidance for the empirical analysis of my forthcoming work.
5) What are the opportunities for collaboration around the issue?
In the end, it’s not about reinventing the wheel, but to be able to piece different fragments together in order to strengthen the existing systems. I’m hoping that by attending the GGKP Annual Conference we’ll be able to learn from what others are doing elsewhere, how they are doing it, and what they have come up with. I will take back the lessons learned and adopt them into my own work space, to revise and improve on what I am already doing, and, most importantly, to be able to implement them for a better result. I would like to network and collaborate with others doing related or similar work across the geographical space.
6) Which session(s) are you interested in attending at GGKP7 and why?
This has been the hardest decision leading to the conference so far because all of the sessions are like the building blocks of my work. Gender parity is a central issue to sustainable global energy transitions and is central to the achievement of all the other SDGs. For me, it will be about active listening and note taking in all sessions.