Category: Energy Justice

Amui Dzor Solar Project in Ashaiman, Ghana

Organize

As of 2017, the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) has organized 338 groups in 25 cities and towns. A few years ago in Ashaiman, Greater Accra, the federation and its partners constructed a low cost housing project for 36 families, incorporating commercial facilities and public space. The development is called the Amui Dzor Housing Project and it is managed by a community cooperative. This year, the community began to organize its members and consider how they might capitalize on the Energy Commission of Ghana’s subsidy programme for rooftop solar PV. This aims to promote renewable energy use for households but is framed as being only accessible to detached houses rather than multi-family dwellings such as Amui Dzor. The priority for the organizing was to establish whether a solar project could reduce the utility bills of Amui Dzor residents and provide a reliable source of electricity to homes and businesses.

Collaborate

With support from the federation support NGO People’s Dialogue and SDI, the federation began engagement with the Energy Commission to request a partnership for the solar electrification of Amui Dzor and demonstrate Ghana’s first multi-family housing facility to make use of a net metering and smart metering system. The community argued that the project would serve as a precedent-setting project for affordable low impact housing. The Energy Commission signed on with enthusiasm as did the Ashaiman Municipal Council, both agencies providing significant support to the project. The ground was set for project design and implementation.

Thrive

The final project design not only reduces the energy tariffs of the cooperative, but increases their resilience to electricity tariff increases and outages. Although this project involves a building retrofit, the intention is for it to set a precedent for solar integration into all future low-income housing developments. The Amui Dzor project complements the Ghana Alliance’s efforts to extend access to household solar kits and lanterns. In all projects, the federation has trained members in solar system installation and maintenance.

The Ghana slum dweller federation efforts contribute to improved city resilience by increasing access to affordable and clean energy, improving skills and offering training in low income communities, and demonstrating effective mechanisms for partnership between communities and government.

iShack Project & South African SDI Alliance expand solar services to Longlands community

This material originally appeared on the iShack Facebook page. 

The Longlands community is a small group of households living in informal dwellings on the outskirts of Stellenbosch in South Africa’s Western Cape. The South African SDI Alliance has been working with the community since 2016 and is providing support to address their needs for basic services. Recently, the Longlands residents visited the community in Siqalo to see how Solar Home Systems (SHS) work. Following this visit, they decided to pursue the installation of SHS while they wait to be connected to the formal grid. It was at this point that the SA SDI Alliance and the Longlands community began to work with iShack to develop a plan to jointly provide solar electricity service to Longlands.

First, the community established a savings group, saving incrementally to generate financial contributions towards the cost of SHS for each household. In addition to these savings, the SA SDI Alliance provided grant funding and highly subsidised loans to each household to finance SHS installation.

As a result of these efforts, each household has now received a Solar Home System that powers lights, a television, and charges cell phones and other small media devices. Longlands is close to iShack’s operational base in Stellenbosch and a regular schedule of maintenance and monitoring, including a dedicated Hotline service for reporting any issues and bi-monthly drop-ins, has been planned. Maintenance is often neglected when offering technical solutions to low income communities, but the community-driven process implemented jointly by iShack and the SA SDI Alliance is all about sustainable maintenance service in order to ensure maximum durability and reliability. Capacity building and green skills development for local residents form part of the project, adding a job creation element to the project that enhances community ownership, resilience, and project sustainability.

At this point there appears to be only one major challenge: the community continues to await agreement from Stellenbosch Municipality to subsidise the ongoing maintenance and monitoring of the energy service – a subsidy provided to the 1500 households in the nearby community of Enkanini. Fortunately, the existing agreement between iShack and Stellenbosch Municipality makes provision for service extension to new communities, so there is reason to believe that the Municipality will agree. Longlands residents have submitted a formal request for this support and are waiting for a final answer.

In the meantime, SHS installations will continue. Last week, an Induction Workshop was held for the community, explaining the ins and outs of the SHS to residents and ensuring residents know how to get the most out of their new technology. Two additional pilot systems were also installed.

Although this is a small community project, it represents an important development for a service-delivery model in which communities – partnered with technical service providers and supported by capacity-building organisations like the SA SDI Alliance – take active steps to meet their development needs.

Learn more about the iShack project here and the South African SDI Alliance here.

Clean Cooking for Improved Health in Cape Town

Organise

As of 2017, the South African Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDUP) has organised 626 groups in 51 cities and towns and works in close collaboration with the Informal Settlements Network (ISN) as part of the SA SDI Alliance. This year, the Alliance organised around the issue of unclean cooking. Toxic smoke from indoor cooking with charcoal and paraffin kills 4.3 million people annually and primarily affects women and children. At a forum in Cape Town it was clear how much the issue resonated with leaders from the city’s shack settlements. The women explained the significant challenges posed by unclean cooking and heating. They explained the paraffin they use for cooking and heating causes chest pain and congestion. They lamented the frequent accidents, injuries, and shack fires caused by paraffin cookers and heaters, reciting terrible stories of injury and property loss. They explained how expensive paraffin and kerosene becomes in the winter (when distributors increase their prices) and how far they have to travel to purchase it. They explained that they prefer to buy fuel in small quantities due to unreliable incomes. The upfront cost of a gas canister is also prohibitive and the tanks are hard to carry around settlements. They said electricity is expensive and is frequently cut off in the settlements. At a community forum convened by the federation and ISN in the neighbourhood of Gugulethu, a demonstration of the Philips clean cook stove was held and the community cooked lunch on the stove to test out the technology. It was a chance to interrogate the stove’s affordability, functionality, and fuel.

Collaborate

Once it was agreed that the stove was safe and cost effective, SDI and the SA SDI Alliance launched a joint venture under the title of “Partnership on Clean Cooking Projects in Cape Town”. The collaboration brings together a social enterprise, Clean Cooking Revolution (CCR), and communities in the SA SDI Alliance with the intention of scaling CCR’s operations into new markets. The so-called “last mile distribution” challenge is well known in the renewable energy sector and many federations are exploring ways to collaborate with businesses to bring quality products into the informal settlement market and create business opportunities for their communities. To this end, the collaboration aims to pilot an innovative model of community part-ownership – or equity – in a social enterprise. SDI is providing project level support, assistance in the identification of new settlements with a demonstrated need for improved cookstoves, as well as strategic advice to the SA SDI Alliance regarding how to structure a recoverable investment with CCR.

Thrive

In South Africa, the partnership with CCR has the potential to lead to additional collaboration in the area of stove manufacturing. The federation will feed knowledge back to CCR about product user experience and adaptations that women in informal settlements prioritise. Through the Know Your City TV program, youth from shack settlements have been equipped with media training in order to document the present state of cooking in their settlements and produce film and media to raise awareness of the dangers of unclean cooking. Using data gathered through profiling and enumeration and SenseMaker ® work, they are able to target the message effectively.

The SA SDI Alliance’s efforts contribute to improved city resilience by reducing human vulnerability resulting from indoor air pollution and fire hazards. Their efforts improve access to clean energy and build skills and livelihoods among the urban poor.

What’s Cooking in Urban Africa? A Michelin Star Chef Travels Africa’s Slums on a Quest for Cooking Wisdom

Solar for the Slums of Jinja

Organize

As of 2017, the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda (NSDFU) has organized 2,052 groups in 20 cities and towns. In Jinja, as in many cities in Uganda, the poor generally pay significantly more for electricity than formally grid-connected city residents. In addition, they are often exposed to grave danger by illegally tapping the main supply, or mixing kerosene with diesel to prolong its use — exposing themselves to respiratory risk and fires that quickly wipe out entire settlements. The federation has been organizing in Jinja for over ten years and is recognized for having one of the strongest community-government partnerships in the SDI network. In 2017, the federation began to organize for clean energy solutions, starting with targeted profiling and enumeration of informal settlement energy needs and priorities.

Collaborate

With support from SDI, the federation was able to develop and sign an MOU with Jinja Municipal Council (JMC), leveraging a 10% subsidy for 650 solar home systems and securing support for a pilot for solar-powered off-grid public street lighting. This contribution was subsequently increased to a 50% financial contribution by the Mayor. The project demonstrates an alternative basic energy service delivery model delivered by a community-based service cooperative with a membership drawn from the regional federation. The Jinja Basic Energy Service Cooperative provides subsidized access to home systems and will work in collaboration with the JMC to fabricate, install, and maintain pedestrian street lighting. The project aligns with settlement upgrading spatial plans co-produced by the federation, university and NGO partners, and the Council to provide visible and tangible change around which the community can organize to achieve more complex aims, such as land sharing agreements. Project finance is managed through the federation savings and loans systems. The project design offers a cost optimization model for clean energy service delivery for low-income households and public spaces in low-income communities.

Thrive

Uganda is known for having some of the best conditions for solar energy in the world. Although the solar market in Uganda is well developed, the sector has yet to accommodate the majority of the urban population who reside in slums. With this project, Jinja has become a learning center for solar energy solutions, hosting peer-to-peer exchanges and trainings with federations from across East Africa. The project aims to improve the built environment and the lives of the poorest and, critically, build the agency of the urban poor and their capabilities related to project management and design. The project is directed by a multi-stakeholder advisory committee to the office of the Town Clerk, a body which includes federation members and has proven highly influential in the project’s success to date.

The project demonstrates the potential for inclusive and collaborative energy solutions to combat energy injustice and build greater urban resilience.

Private Sector Collaboration for Energy Justice in Mumbai

Organize

As of 2017, the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan in India have organized 694 groups in 81 cities and towns. Home to the oldest national federation in the network, the India SDI Alliance is a critical driver of peer-to-peer exchanges to organize and capacitate federations in Asia and the network at large. This year it became a key organizer of communities looking to find solutions to energy poverty. Success stories of energy-poor communities gaining improved access to renewable, affordable, reliable, and safe electricity through innovative strategies frequently reference rural areas but what of the urban poor communities? How can state strategies for energy security keep pace with the continued expansion of urban populations while at the same time satisfying existing demand? Can the human, financial, political, and environmental assets of the urban poor be harnessed to increase energy security and contribute to city resilience more broadly?

Collaborate

Both Maharashtra State and the Indian Central Government are working hard to incentivize use of renewables in the country’s energy mix. In November 2017, NSDF and Mahila Milan, with their support NGO, SPARC, held discussions with a private sector developer, the state electricity distribution company, and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). They agreed to partner on a precedent-setting, community-man- aged pilot project installing grid-connected rooftop solar PV onto government-built, low income city housing projects in Mumbai. This small-scale embedded generation infrastructure will subsidize the energy tariff of the housing’s public utilities, including water pumps, lifts, and corridor lighting, freeing up additional financial resources for use by the cooperative in the maintenance of the buildings. Women from Mahila Milan have been trained in routine maintenance and energy use monitoring of the solar system. Ultimately, the aim is to demonstrate a model that can be locally financed and managed and contribute to energy security and financial resilience for the city at large.

Thrive

As a result of the community’s organizing power, government cooperation, and the help of the private sector, the India SDI Alliance is aiming to reduce the electricity tariff for some of the poorest apartment dwellers in Mumbai. The aim is to install these systems in four more buildings in Mumbai during the first part of 2018. If the pilot proves successful, there are at least 500 such buildings housing very poor relocated or rehabilitated households in Mumbai that could bene t from replication of this project.

The India slum dweller federation efforts are enhancing city resilience by improving access to affordable clean energy, building skills in poor communities, and supporting multi-stakeholder collaboration.

In the coming weeks, SDI will share the case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience’ here on our blog.  Emerging from the field of ecology,  ‘resilience’  describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.

As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report. 

Inauguration of Solar Energy Project in Mumbai Slum Housing Project

Success stories in accessing affordable, reliable, and safe electricity for the poor are commonly registered from rural areas but what of the urban poor? There is far less real world success in addressing challenges the poor face in cities across the world, limited understanding of how cities will manage the secure supply of clean and affordable electricity for urban informal communities as urbanisation continues, and less precedent for how urban poor residents can play an important role. That being said, organized urban poor communities affiliated with the SDI network are beginning to demonstrate the critical role of the urban poor in practically contributing to clean energy transitions while simultaneously increasing resilience.

On the 28^th of November 2017, Mahila Milan and the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India inaugurated a 12kWp rooftop solar PV system on a large-scale government housing complex in Govandi, Mumbai (SRA Building 11C in Natwar Parikh, Indian Oil Compound). SRA is the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, the state level authority administering a government program that provides housing for Mumbai’s poor. The solar PV system installed at building 11C makes use of enabling net-metering policy and a capital subsidy, incentivizing the tapping of Mumbai’s vast rooftop solar potential. Connected to the grid supply the system imports as well as exports electricity allowing the housing cooperative a saving of around Rs. 1.9 lakhs annually (roughly USD 1500).

Communal facilities supplemented by the newly installed solar PV system include: common area lighting, elevators, and crucially the pumping of water from underground tanks to overhead tanks. These energy costs are conventionally borne by levies paid by the building’s residents. A reduction in the cooperative’s overall electricity bill means more money for maintenance. As with other NSDF managed projects, 100% of routine maintenance of the solar system is done by trained Mahila Milan members.

The Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission aims to position India as a global leader in the production of solar electricity. There’s real momentum in powering the country’s development through an increased use of clean generation sources, reducing carbon as emissions associated with fossil fuel generation.

SDI’s Indian Alliance aims to install these systems in 4 more buildings in Mumbai during the first part of 2018.

Cleaner Cooking in Slums

Toxic smoke of household cooking with charcoal or paraffin kills 4.3 million people annually (more than HIV/AIDS and Malaria combined) and primarily affects women and children. In slums, the indoor air pollution risks are coupled with grave risk of fires that frequently destroy lives and livelihoods.

SDI’s people-driven clean cooking initiative improves public health in slum communities by providing valuable solutions for the poorest households – especially women and children. Click above to learn more. 

What does it mean to “Know Your City” in South Africa?

**This post originally appeared on the SA SDI Alliance blog.**
By Yolande Hendler and Kwanda Lande (on behalf of CORC)

“What’s the difference when we collect data on our own informal settlements?” – a question that Melanie and Nozuko asked to a packed room of 150 people, including the South African Minister of Human SettIements, Lindiwe Sisulu. As urban poor residents and coordinators of social movements (FEDUP and ISN), it was noteworthy that both Nozuko and Melanie shared the stage with the minister as equals.

Nozuko Fulani speaking together with FEDUP Chairperson, Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and ISN’s Melanie Johnson in a panel discussion on data collection from vulnerable population.
Nozuko (far right) sharing the stage with FEDUP Chairperson Rose Molokoane (far left), Minister Lindiwe Sisulu (centre left) and ISN’s Melanie Johnson (centre right) in a panel discussion on data collection from vulnerable population.

In a world in which digital data (including data on informal settlements) is increasingly collected and owned by “experts”, Melanie and Nozuko introduced a different narrative: “As FEDUP and ISN we have profiled 1500 informal settlements in South Africa over the past 20 years.” This is close to half the number informal settlements in South Africa (currently estimated at between 2700 and 3200).

On 7 September 2017, the South African SDI Alliance co-hosted the Digital Impact World Tour with SDI and the US-based Stanford Centre for Philanthropy and Civil Society in Cape Town’s Langa township. This one-day “stop” – the eighth on the tour and the first in Africa – discussed the role of data collection in the production of social change in the digital age, and in particular the power of community-gathered data for partnerships with local governments.

Minister of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu, welcoming participants of the conference and setting the Setting the stage for a conversation to share ideas and experiences.
Minister of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu, welcoming participants of the conference and setting the stage for a conversation to share ideas and experiences.

With people in attendance who represent fellow slum dweller social movements, civil society, funders, academics, government at all tiers and private sector actors, the event reinforced a commitment to ensure that urban poor communities are part of and shape the conversation. On behalf of informal settlement residents affiliated to FEDUP and ISN, Melanie and Nozuko spoke about the core of community-gathered data:

To us, data collection is about organising communities. We don’t just collect information but collect people too. The minute we start collecting data about ourselves, we begin to understand ourselves as a collective and in a fairly deeper way.

We understand the context of our settlements and we go deep into the household level when collecting data. When we profile and enumerate settlements, data is collected by community members living in that settlement. We make sure that we count everyone. This is why sometimes when you compare our data and government’s data they are totally different. We also communicate the data back to our communities in a way that communities understand – government does not always do this.

This data helps us to make our own community based plans. It is about looking at problems from our point of view and finding solutions. It is about opening up a space to plan for our own upgrading. It is necessary for government to get involved because we do have solutions on the ground.

Amidst conversations on digital dependencies and innovative digital organisations, the urgency for government to “get involved” and support community-gathered data was evident. This emerged strongly in contributions made by members of the broader SDI network, South African SDI Alliance, Social Justice Coalition and International Budget Partnership, a fellow social movement and partner in the sector, who spoke about community-gathered data through social audits.

The task to the minister and all government representatives in the room was clear, whether local, provincial or national: commit to supporting the Know Your City campaign on community-gathered data for co-productive partnerships between slum dwellers and local governments.

Though organized urban poor communities have been profiling and enumerating their settlements for over 20 years, the campaign (launched in 2014) established a digital platform to house this data and anchor the coproduction of inclusive urban development by communities, city governments and global urban development actors.

We have the power, ability and knowledge to collect data and organise our communities but what we want is for government to walk with us. We already started but we need a partnership to scale up our efforts. We want support from government, non-government organisations, private sector and academia.

The minister committed to financially supporting the work of community-gathered data in cities across South Africa. For South African organisations and movements in the sector, THE next steps are clear: “We need to follow up the minister’s pledge to support data collection by informal settlement residents for all organisations” (Rose Molokoane, national SA Alliance coordinator).

So what is the difference with community-gathered data? “It’s about organizing ourselves, understanding ourselves and our settlements. It’s about making our own development plans, partnering with our local governments and sharing a stage as equals. It’s about Knowing Our City.”