Sub-Saharan African governments urged to focus on off-grid solar

Existing studies have proved adept at identifying households who appear to have financially benefited from access to off-grid solar through increased income. But they have been less well attuned to the downsides.

Alongside rising indebtedness, these include the more general processes of polarisation, marginalisation and exclusion that inevitably accompany any process of capitalist economic development.

If, as Brazilian economist Celso Furtado once wrote, capitalist development is “a process of reshaping social relations founded on accumulation”, future research would do well to focus on how social relations are being reshaped by off-grid solar expansion – and with what consequences.

This story was written by Ben Radley, lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath, UK. It first appeared on The Conversation website and is republished here under Creative Commons Licence.