Local solutions for energy access

One of the Transforming Energy Access – Learning Partnership’s (TEA-LP) key commitments is to support universities in enhancing their delivery of Masters’ curricula that support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7: affordable and clean energy for all. One of the Masters’-level course, Local Solutions to Energy Access, which the TEA-LP was involved in developing takes an in-depth, holistic look at some of the ways in which SDG7 can be achieved, while equipping students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies needed to make positive contributions to energy access fields in their region.

The framework for the Local Solutions to Energy Access course was designed by Prof. Augustine Makokha of Moi University, Kenya, with inputs from a panel of experts with extensive industry experience. The course is being delivered by all 23 of our partner universities and serves as a pre-requisite course for the other two Masters’-level courses that TEA-LP was involved with designing; one titled Mini-Grids: Planning and Design and one titled Appliances for Off-Grid Communities. The course consists of six modules, covering a multidisciplinary range of topics pertaining to local solutions for energy access.

The first module is technically focused and looks at distributed energy systems, teaching students how to select the best technical design option for a distributed renewable energy context. Given the importance of effective stakeholder engagement in developing off-grid, decentralised solutions, the second module explores demand assessment and community engagement, while giving students the necessary skills to appraise relevant socio-economic and cultural community dynamics, and to effectively use tools for engagement in an off-grid community context. To support the holistic perspective, the course also explores business models for energy access as well as finance for the DRE sector, teaching students’ valuable skills that they would otherwise not necessarily have been exposed to unless they specifically enrolled in a finance or business course. There is also a module on policy and regulation, where students can learn to critique local energy policies and regulations in terms of their impact on local energy access, before the course concludes with a module on environmental stewardship, which aims to deepen students’ knowledge and appreciation of UN’s SDG7 while learning how they can minimise environmental impact once in industry.

The course is being delivered at 23 universities across multiple regions, including East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific. It was a significant challenge to design a course that was relevant and applicable to all these regions and to combat this, the course was designed such that there was flexibility for institutions to localise the course to suit their context. To begin with, TEA-LP reviewed and conducted quality audits on a database of resources that spanned across all the abovementioned regions, ensuring that there would be at least several resources applicable to each region. Staff who were involved in delivering the course at their institutions were encouraged to source locally relevant case studies, and many of them were able to draw on their own research and professional relationships to populate a range of case studies.

At this point, many of the partner universities have already had a graduating cohort from the Local Solutions to Energy Access course, with the remaining universities either currently delivering the course or in the final stages of enrolment for their first cohorts. The dedication and commitment to creating world-class, locally relevant learning experiences for the Masters’ students in the energy access fields has been inspiring to see, and we look forward to hearing about the success stories of the graduates as time goes on.

-Kai Forster