Turning the Lights On in Liberia Through Off-Grid Innovation

• Published in: Africa policy journal Vol. 14; pp. 9 - X
• Main Author: Shaw, Lucy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Harvard Journal of African American Policy Studies 01.04.2019
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Alternative energy; Business models; Civil war; Conflict; Ebola virus; Economic development; Electricity; Electricity generation; Engineering firms; GDP; Gross Domestic Product; Infrastructure; Iron compounds; Population; Power plants; Private sector; Schools; Tariffs; Liberia; West Africa; Nigeria
• ISSN: 2332-581X

Rebuilding a country after conflict is immensely challenging, and Liberia, one of the poorest countries in the world, is no exception. The West African country of just 4.7 million people has struggled through decades of turbulence, including multiple civil wars and most recently the ravages of the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. In spite of this, over the last decade Liberia has pursued improvements in state capacity, education, and healthcare while also investing in infrastructure to support much-needed economic development.However, making progress on electricity infrastructure has been challenging, and Liberia is on track to remain severely under-electrified by the year 2030, the year by which the United Nations targets universal energy access globally.1 This need not be the case for Liberia's electricity sector.The rise of off-grid business models across Africa and the new ways that the private sector can be engaged to achieve social objectives offer an opportunity for Liberia and other small, post-conflict countries to overcome traditional energy access constraints in an affordable way. In particular, Liberia could partially fund its electrification journey through policies that position Liberia as a hotbed of off-grid energy innovation in West Africa.