“A lender should not know where you live”: Financial precarity, debt, and everyday life in rural Malawi and Tanzania

Yours, mine, and ours: gender, intra-household dynamics, and financing solar home systems in Tanzania

“…Female-headed households and those from 'jointly-financed' households had a higher prevalence of using debt-financing (figure 3). We contextualized this result with our findings that respondents reporting female decisionmaking power had a higher prevalence for using savings, that there is a universal strong aversion to debt [8], and that female-headed households face disproportionate barriers [62]. Further, previous literature found that debt schemes burden female and low-income SHS adopters [6,19,63].…”

“…These districts have 26.6%, 31.9%, 40%, and 35.8% of households relying on solar energy as their main source of lighting respectively. Further context description can be found in [8,9].…”

“…In two accompanying papers [8,9], we found that adopters used 12 financial tools to obtain their SHS, the most common of which were savings, intermittent income from sale of farm produce or small business, consistent salary, rent-to-own agreements, and a one-time SHS purchase. Respondents demonstrated a large aversion to debt-based financing and opted to borrow from individuals with whom they have strong ties.…”

“…Our work is based on a single cross-sectional data set, prohibiting any discussion of causality. We attempt to limit sampling, interviewer, and social desirability bias through thorough testing the survey 8 , working with local leaders to ensure coverage, explaining that there were no incorrect answers, and creating rapport with respondents.…”

“…Multiple financing 3 strategies, such as rent-to-own models and energy-as-a-service, have expanded but still represent a minority of the market [7]. Little is known about the specific financing instruments that the majority of SHS adopters use to obtain their systems [8,9], and the intra-household dynamics surrounding that purchase.…”