Energy service provision in urban informal settlements: An analysis from Kampala and Freetown

The world is urbanising. By 2050, 68% of the global population is expected to be urban. Most of this urban growth is occurring in low- and middle-income countries, and much of the new urban population lives in low-income informal settlements. Residents of these areas have often experience poor quality formal service provision. Energy is a key service for many households, providing cooking, lighting, entertainment, security and ability to earn a living.
This paper investigates the provision of energy services in two informal communities, Portee Rokupa in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Kinawataka in Kampala, Uganda. A survey was conducted on around 400 households within each of the communities to quantify electricity and cooking service provision and understand where participants see their key energy service challenges.
In both communities, there was a high number of households connected to the electrical grid (over 90%) however, households suffered from regular blackouts, voltage fluctuations and disconnections, such that they were not able to rely on-grid electricity, reverting to backup lighting sources such as mobile phone torches and candles. Charcoal was the dominant cooking fuel with over 92% of participants using it. Many households were keen to explore clean cooking alternatives, but saw price as a barrier. In Portee Rokupa, households spent on average 35% less on cooking energy than lighting, whilst in Kinawataka, households spent 60% more on cooking energy than lighting.
The poor reliability and high cost of energy services requires households to have secondary energy supplies for redundancy from technical or economic issues. Our complete dataset combined with qualitative enquiry provides a rich picture of realities faced by most of the urban population in informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa and speaks to themes of energy demand, place and justice.