Electrifying urban Africa: energy access, city-making and globalisation in Nigeria and Benin

Abstract

Electricity access has become a crucial issue in global South cities. While demand is growing, conventional grids are failing or insufficient, especially in Africa. Urban dwellers therefore have to develop a wide range of (in)formal infrastructures to meet their daily electricity needs. Building on recent studies on urban electricity in the global South, this paper aims to contribute to the debates on hybrid forms of electricity provision by analysing the diffusion of solar panels and generators in two cities, Ibadan in Nigeria and Cotonou in Benin. Although neighbouring and relatively similar, these two cities illustrate distinct daily electrical lives. In Nigeria, an electricity-exporting country, people face daily power outages. In Benin, a country that depends on Nigeria for its supply, there is electricity but it is difficult to connect to the grid because of connection costs. Based on an empirical study, the article shows that Ibadan’s inhabitants use generators as a complement to a conventional grid that is almost universal but unreliable. In Cotonou, solar energy is an alternative until they can connect to the grid. Generators and solar panels have become the material markers of urban Africa, providing information on inequalities in access to electricity.

An evaluation of 2013 privatization on Benin Electricity Distribution technical and workforce performance

“…Jimoh and Raji (2023) corroborated previous studies, stating that power outages and load shedding are expected because the nation's power generation frequently falls short of demand. Rateau and Choplin (2020) also affirmed that Nigeria's electrical infrastructure is outdated and insufficient to maintain a steady electricity supply.…”

Independence through leapfrogging: Energy transitions in Eswatini

“…Firstly, a large number of those counted as having access to electricity also have unreliable and poorly functioning power supplies (Angelou et al., 2013 in Ulsrud, 2020). There are millions of people in sub‐Saharan Africa who are poorly served by the existing electricity grid, which frequently fails to support reliable access due to processes such as load‐shedding (planned electricity supply interruptions when demand cannot be met) and technical issues, often related to old and poorly maintained infrastructure (Rateau & Choplin, 2022). Therefore, the statistics on infrastructural access may only give us a partial picture.…”

Urban electricity governance and the (re)production of heterogeneous electricity constellations in Dar es Salaam

“…State actors thereby apply 'practical norms' , i.e., implicit yet routinized practices that complement, bypass, or contradict formal institutions [19]. Consequently, research on the governance of existing heterogeneous electricity constellations needs to more adequately address (1) the institutional complexity resulting from the interplay of different governance modalities, beyond a predominant focus on market-based logics that govern alternative services, such as solar systems and generators [20], and (2) the important role various state actors have beyond frequent attempts to regularize alternative services [14]. The research question resulting from these gaps is: "How does the interplay of different governance modalities explain the emergence and persistence of urban and infrastructural heterogeneity in sub-Saharan African cities?…”