Non-electrified people in Africa, still more than 500 million today, have been using kerosene and candles for their lighting purposes for decades. The lighting quality of these sources is low and in particular kerosene usage is associated with harmful soot emissions. Alleviating this grievance...

Providing access to electricity is widely considered as a precondition for socio-economic development in rural areas of developing countries. While electrification interventions are often expected to reduce poverty through productive uses for income generating purposes, the reality in rural...

Quantitative benchmarks for cost-effective provision of rural energy access are difficult to obtain because deployment costs vary across technologies, contexts, and technical assistance approaches - but crucially also across sustainability assumptions. As an alternative, this policy perspective...

This perspective article discusses whether energy access programs in rural Sub-Saharan Africa reach the poor in a way that most policy actors claim. We examine on- and off-grid electrification as well as improved cooking. The success of pro-poor development is predicated on the programs...

Widely considered as an important backbone of economies in developing countries, micro- and small enterprises face several constraints in doing business in Ghana. The creation of industrial zones (IZ) with improved access to infrastructure and secured land tenure is a potential remedy to promote...

More than 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. The UN have proclaimed the goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. In recent years, Pico-Photovoltaic kits have become a lower cost alternative to investment intensive grid electrification. Using a randomized controlled trial we...

The United Nations' objective to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people without access in developing countries comes at high costs. Little evidence exists on socioeconomic impacts of electrification. This paper rigorously investigates effects of a large grid extension program in Rwanda on...

More than 1.3 billion people in developing countries are lacking access to electricity. Based on the assumption that electricity is a prerequisite for human development, the United Nations initiative Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) has proclaimed the goal of providing modern energy to all by...

The investment requirements to achieve the United Nations' universal electricity access goal by 2030 are estimated at 640 billion US Dollars. The assumption underlying this goal is that electrification contributes to poverty alleviation in many regards. In recent years, a body of literature has...

This final report is part of an evaluation commissioned by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It belongs to a series of impact evaluations of renewable energy and development programmes supported by the Netherlands, with a focus...