Sustainability Dissertation Defense: Beyond Access: Barriers and Pathways to Sustained Electricity Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sustainability Dissertation Defense

Beyond Access: Barriers and Pathways to Sustained Electricity Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

Courage Ekoh
Sustainability Ph.D. Candidate
Golisano Institute for Sustainability
Advised by Dr. Amitrajeet A. Batabyal
External Dissertation Exam Chair: Santosh Kurinec

RIT's Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS) welcomes all to the Dissertation Defense of Ph.D. Program in Sustainability candidate Courage Ekoh. The defense shall include approximately 40-45 minutes of presentation by the candidate, followed by 15-20 minutes for Q&A. Those who wish to attend may do so in-person or virtually via Zoom.

The Abstract for Ekoh's Dissertation is as follows:

Sub-Saharan Africa has connected hundreds of millions of people to electricity over the past two decades, yet electricity use among the newly connected remains persistently low and, by many aggregate measures, declining. This gap between access and use threatens the financial viability of utilities and the developmental promise of electrification. This dissertation examines what happens after the connection through three studies conducted at successive scales: villages and households, the utility investment problem, and grid-connected industry.

Study 1 asks what lies beneath the widely reported decline in average consumption. Using prepaid electricity transactions from more than 350,000 grid connections in Rwanda (2013 to 2019), time-series clustering reveals three village-level consumption trajectories, and the decline suggested by the national trend describes only about half of residential villages. A cohort-based decomposition shows that observed decline mixes real consumption reduction among established customers with dilution from newer customers who connect at lower baselines. Utilities should therefore measure and forecast demand by connection cohort and sector rather than by national average.

Study 2 asks how a capital-constrained utility should invest to raise consumption. An agent-based framework, calibrated to Multi-Tier Framework survey data, ranks supply-side reliability investment against demand-side appliance financing by their return on capital across heterogeneous households. The optimal strategy proves state-dependent: financing maximizes returns for roughly 74 percent of households in high-reliability Rwanda, while the portfolio is nearly balanced in lower-reliability North-West Nigeria, where infrastructure still limits use. A credit-guarantee structure substantially extends the reach of a fixed budget.

Lastly, Study 3 examines why grid-connected industrial firms may not use electricity for their dominant energy need. All 69 Kenya Tea Development Agency factories purchase grid electricity yet meet almost none of their process-heat demand with it, burning firewood instead. A techno-economic and life cycle assessment shows that firewood is sufficiently cheaper per unit of heat that no electricity price achieves breakeven; closing the gap requires carbon priced at about 73 US dollars per tonne or firewood at three times its current price. This identifies a barrier distinct from reliability, affordability, and appliance ownership: the relative price of the incumbent energy carrier.

Across the three studies, no single post-connection deficit explains low electricity use. The main barrier is context-dependent and cannot be inferred from access status alone. The dissertation therefore argues for diagnosis before prescription, providing utilities and policymakers with a framework for identifying the main constraint in each setting and directing investment toward the interventions with the highest expected returns.

GIS Sustainability Program requirements dictate that the candidate's presentation will address the following elements, as they relate to his research:

• The sustainability challenge being addressed and its relevance
• Specific research questions, objectives, novelty, and accomplishments
• The approach and specific methods applied and why
• Key results, interpretations, and conclusions 

All are welcome to attend!