Within reach? Sustainable energy infrastructure financing for “hardest to reach” communities

Providing energy access in “hard to reach” under- or unelectrified contexts like informal settlements or remote rural regions requires rethinking how we develop and finance energy access business models. While terminologies like “hardest to reach,” “reaching the last mile” or “leaving no-one behind” have increasingly been used within energy access and broader development discourses, different country and regional contexts present unique and practical challenges for deploying electrification models in these areas. These challenges are also intrinsically linked to the viability gap, which results from a disjuncture between end-users' ability to pay and revenues required to cover the cost of service. “Hard to reach” areas can comprise geographically remote regions like rural villages or urban informal settlements where households and businesses are precluded from grid electricity and other key infrastructure services due to financial, socio-technical and socio-political barriers despite being directly “under the grid.” In this paper we argue that contextual grounding is needed when exploring the intricacies of delivering energy access in contexts that traditionally lack formal service provision, security of tenure and material certainty. We furthermore argue that it is necessary to critically engage with discourses that characterize geographic remoteness as “un-electrifiable.” Notwithstanding the increased focus on leaving no-one behind in the international agenda, more pragmatic grounding is needed to understand and draw lessons from energy access in dynamic contexts. Drawing on the authors' current and prior experience working on research projects on off-grid energy and other infrastructures across sub-Saharan Africa, the paper compares the geographic contexts of urban informality and geographically remote contexts through six case studies from Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and Madagascar. It explores the intricacies and practicalities of providing energy access in urban informal settlements, remote rural villages or displacement settings, and provides lessons for policy and practice.