Cash, Credit, or Kin? Financing Pathways and the Uneven Sustainability of Off‐Grid Solar Electrification in Tanzania and Malawi

ABSTRACT Solar home systems (SHSs) are celebrated as a technological antidote to sub–Saharan Africa's chronic electricity deficits, yet the financial and social mechanisms that move them from warehouse to household remain underexplored. Drawing on 157 interviews with SHS owners in Tanzania and Malawi, this study examines the financial pathways used to gain access to SHSs and how each pathway reconfigures sustainability outcomes aligned to some Sustainable Development Goals. We find that the credit model compresses the wait for electricity from months to days but embeds new vulnerabilities of remote disconnection and debt anxiety; cash‐only strategies safeguard dignity and post‐purchase reliability but delay electrification; and hybrid finance leverages social capital to widen access while collateralizing reputation. Conceptually, we coin the term “moral–monetary infrastructures” to foreground liquidity horizons, reputational sanctions, and remote shut‐off technologies as co‐producing elements of energy transitions. We extend this further by showing how social infrastructure underpins access and continuity. By reframing both finance and social relations as infrastructural, the study deepens socio‐technical transition theories and enriches energy justice frameworks with alternative temporal, psychosocial, and relational dimensions.