Policy actors, investors, private sector and NGO’s have focused mainly on the hardware and economics of clean cooking solutions. They developed new (user-friendly) appliances, increased supply and cut costs for costumers. The missing link for a successful cooking transition however is the attention for the personal, social and cultural habits that come with cooking. The transition requires people to change their daily routine, including adopting new cooking technologies and even cooking different foods. And as much as policy actors, investors, private sector and NGO’s in the field try to understand this reality on the ground, there is only so much they can do without the involvement of communities.

With this in mind, Hivos commissioned the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to conduct a case study with rural households in Kenya aimed at hearing from people how they envision a 100% electric cooking future and co-developing a transition pathway towards this vision.

The study indeed shows that communities have a huge role to play in a transition process that concerns them. The individual participants in the study stressed the need for the community itself to be the driver of change. Furthermore, “This study showed that, given a platform and some simple visioning tools, citizens are more than capable of describing complex transition pathways towards their desired future,” says Fiona Lambe, Research Fellow at SEI. “It highlights the capability and agency of people who are typically only on the receiving end of large development programs. Suddenly we see how a community’s own resources, relationships and capacities could drive the transition to electric cooking.”

As a consequence, the study concluded that the clean cooking transition should start by empowering villagers, by working with early adapters, and by building the know-how and confidence of the community to engage with government entities to access key services.

The study further explains that NGOs can play a crucial role in introducing new cooking transition technologies, demonstrating mini grids and training communities, but the community and specifically the early adopters of these technologies are those who can make this change real.

Governments and development partners, in turn, are called upon to spur progress on multiple levels, from public services and large-scale infrastructure to full electrification, to improved education and health facilities. All these sectors are profoundly interlinked and require cross-sectoral cooperation.

Surprisingly, the private sector was not mentioned explicitly. However, it can be stated that involving communities in the clean cooking transition can pave the way and create a friendly business environment for them to invest and market their products.  

The study is an initial step towards stressing the need of building knowledge on the behavioural and cultural aspects of transitions to cooking with electricity. Governments and donors must consider the household and community perspective, how the transition to electric cooking is perceived locally, and take actions based on the role and responsibilities of various actors engaged in the system, from the household to civil society to the private sector.

This business plan was recently presented to the Uganda Rural Electrification Agency (REA), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who funded the project through the Cooperative Development Program. The goal? To create an environment that can help rural electric utilities survive, succeed and ultimately expand affordable, reliable and safe electricity access to more consumers in the rural areas of the country.

Helping the small become mighty

Rural electric utilities commonly don’t have the capacity to grow, let alone increase their knowledge bank on how to hone their technical skills and quality of service. Instead, the small teams at these utilities find themselves making do with whatever resources they have and struggling to meet the needs of their consumers. They often fall into the trap of being too small to invest in what is necessary to improve their capacity to grow their businesses.

UREDA’s mission will be to help these small entities gain a common voice in the halls of Government in Kampala, build more capacity to efficiently manage operations, gain stronger negotiation power with suppliers, and also reduce revenue losses due to power theft and frequent power outages.

Assessing needs and priorities

NRECA International is drawing upon its leadership in creating and supporting other common service associations like UREDA to create a successful environment for its members. This includes decades-old relationships with the cooperative movement in the Philippines (Rural Electrification Finance Corporation), Costa Rica (Consortium of Costa Rica Electric Cooperatives), and extensive experience with national, regional and statewide rural electric cooperative associations in the U.S.

In Uganda, the NRECA International team involved stakeholders at all levels to identify the following priorities that need to be addressed, and eventually include them in the association’s member services and programs:

• Training and capacity building that includes safety and skills training for lineworkers, utility staff and board of directors.
• Accelerating electricity connections under the country’s Electricity Connections Policy which includes implementing an affordable house wiring program.
• Joint procurement of equipment and materials.
• Advocacy and representation of each member organization to promote and lobby key government policies and programs that impact them.
• Revenue protection to reduce non-technical loss and control power outages.
• Provide off-grid electrification services to accelerate universal electricity access in the services territories.

A solid foundation for the future

The need for solid footing is clear – without one, these small utilities will not survive in the long-term, which ultimately will not help the government of Uganda meet its universal energy access goals, or the needs of its population to advance and improve their lives. The NRECA International team has laid out a financially viable path for these rural utilities that will set the stage for an association that can grow sustainably, and more importantly, help strengthen these utilities by teaching them how to work together.