Emmanuelle Guillou: On-grid – Off-grid: emerging electricity systems in areas of scattered urbanisation (Senegal and Tanzania)

The 1990s and 2000s were marked, in many sub-Saharan African countries, by the adoption of neoliberal policies reputed to be conducive to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Senegal and Tanzania are no exception. In the electricity sector, low electrification rates, on the one hand, and the inability of public operators to rapidly expand the conventional grid, on the other, led their governments to undertake institutional reforms characterised by the liberalisation of the sector and the creation of agencies dedicated to rural electrification. Once the preserve of large national or international operators, rural electrification is now open to smaller private operators. Coupled with a reduction in administrative burdens and new sources of funding, liberalisation is benefiting decentralised solutions (mini-grids and solar kits in particular).

The result, in both countries, is a diversification of electricity supply models based on a variety of mechanisms, actors, resources and governance models, which coexist at the local level and which the research analyses as co-production arrangements. Through a multi-scale comparative study conducted in Senegal and Tanzania in areas of diffuse urbanisation, the thesis proposes a conceptual framework and a methodology for rethinking the nature and conditions of the provision of an essential service based on the heterogeneous arrangements observed. It thus draws on the notion of local supply configurations to adopt a cross-cutting approach to the range of existing electrification solutions, understand their interdependencies and examine the conditions for the potential regulation of the various modes of electricity supply at this scale.

By combining a socio-technical approach to the configurations of electricity supply with a socio-economic approach to local electricity markets, this thesis proposes a conceptualisation of the emerging geographies of electricity supply in regions characterised by rapid and diffuse urbanisation. On the one hand, it demonstrates that neoliberal electrification policies have led to a diversification of the electricity supply, better suited to the diversity of demand, to an average increase in coverage and access rates in these areas, and to an improvement – at least partial – in the quality of services provided as a result of market competition. On the other hand, it highlights the limitations of these policies and their market-driven logic, which result in an increase in socio-spatial inequalities at all levels and the exclusion of the poorest from any form of access to electricity. An analysis of these pitfalls highlights the need for regulatory mechanisms, the premises of which – still fragile and disparate – are examined in this thesis. By questioning who receives which service and where, it finally outlines avenues for reflection on what the transition towards a future essential (public) electricity service might look like in these changing urban environments.

Composition of the jury

• Ms Sylvy JAGLIN, Gustave Eiffel University, PhD supervisor
• Ms Pascale TROMPETTE, Université Grenoble Alpes, Rapporteur
• Ms Luisa Moretto, Free University of Brussels, Rapporteur
• Mr Eric VERDEIL, Sciences Po Paris, Examiner
• Mr Philippe LAVIGNE DELVILLE, IRD, Examiner
• Mr Bruno VALFREY, Hydroconseil, Guest