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Villagers laying gaskets

Jennifer Burney

Bessassi women clearing root

Jennifer Burney

Bessassi teen preparing her plot

Jennifer Burney

First use, October 2007

Jennifer Burney

Bessassi Women's Group President standing in the harvest

Jennifer Burney

One third of the world's population currently lives in poverty, with roughly 75% of the poor residing in rural areas where they often lack access to electricity. Unfortunately, in these areas the primary energy source for energy-intensive activities such as pumping water is the diesel generator, which can harm both local air quality and the global climate. Until recently environmentally-friendly energy options have been largely dismissed out-of-hand as economically unfeasible. However, now researchers are now looking at solar power as a potential solution for these rural areas.

An American non-governmental organization, the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), has recently begun the 2-village pilot phase of a novel solar electrification project in the Kalalé district of rural Benin in west Africa. Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment is partnering with SELF to monitor and evaluate the economic, agricultural, environmental, health, and organizational impacts of this project.

Background on Benin
The Sudan-Sahel region of Africa is a place where a small amount of electricity could pay huge dividends. The largely agriculture-dependent populations of these agro-ecological regions are some of the poorest on earth, facing erratic seasonal rains split by long dry periods in which crops cannot be grown, local food prices rise, and malnutrition typically intensifies. Surface water sources for irrigation are few, and irrigation with groundwater is typically infeasible due to a deep water table combined with a lack of power for pumping. Both water and food scarcity problems will likely only worsen with the predicted decline in Sahelian rainfall and temperature rise under global climate change.
The project

Each of the 44 villages in the Kalale district will eventually benefit from a two part solar intervention:

o Solar-powered drip-irrigation systems

o Village-level electrification of public spaces, including schools, community centers, street lights, and water pumps.

When used in tandem, these technologies are expected to increase crop yields and enable people to grow vegetables and generate income during the 6-month dry season. Also, the water pumps will potentially save hours of labor in rural off-grid areas where water hauling is traditionally done by hand by women and young girls. The solar pumps are durable and immune to fuel shortages, and in the medium- to long- term cost less than traditional diesel-powered generators.

The research
The research team, from the Program on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford, will conduct an economic and environmental assessment of this intervention, beginning with the pilot phase. Building on a research design in which the villages receiving the technology are selected at random, Stanford researchers will survey treatment and control villages to isolate the effects of rural solar electrification on incomes, health, and environmental well-being. More broadly, this study will help the team quantitatively and qualitatively understand the potential of solar electrification in improving rural livelihoods relative to other possible interventions, in the poor, agriculturally dependent communities that define rural Africa.

While the goal is to shed light on the potential for solar-based development, the team also hopes that this project will provide a model for increasing interaction and collaboration between academia and development. Thorough evaluation tends to be too expensive, both in time and in resources, for development organizations to undertake alone. Proper study and analysis of project impact, however, will improve the conception, implementation, and success rate of future technology-based development work.