Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Energy exclusion is prevalent throughout Africa, leading to a myriad of energy access projects, technologies, interventions and approaches being explored to address a phenomenon affecting over half the continent’s predominantly rural population. This is exhibited in a recent EU-funded energy access project involving partners, researchers and communities working across many African countries employing various approaches. In this paper, we unfold the employment of two divergent approaches, requirements elicitation and community-based co-design, in an attempt to determine and advance green energy inclusion and innovative use in a low-income, off-grid rural Namibian community. Thereafter, we reflect on the use of each approach, highlighting the need for an elevated and provocative approach that enables innovative and unorthodox energy inclusion permitting energy access and productive use in rural African communities.

Abstract

Energy exclusion is prevalent throughout Africa, leading to a myriad of energyaccess projects, technologies, interventions and approaches being explored to address a phenomenon affecting over half the continent’s predominantly rural population. This is exhibited in a recent EU-funded energy access project involving partners, researchers and communities working across many African countries employing various approaches. In this paper, we unfold the employment of two divergent approaches, requirements elicitation and community-based co-design, in an attempt to determine and advance green energy inclusion and innovative use in a low-income, off-grid rural Namibian community. Thereafter, we reflect on the use of each approach, highlighting the need for an elevated and provocative approach that enables innovative and unorthodox energy inclusion permitting energy access and productive use in rural African communities.

Abstract

This paper, contributing to decolonial design and futuring practice, promotes and explores the recovery of lost futures of the past. Through a series of sessions in a rural indigenous community in Southern Africa, we employ the Chameleon Innovation game as a participatory and community-based ideation method to co-design alternative future innovations and possibilities. The game, as an avenue through which participants accentuate lost indigenous cultural practices from the past, extends an Afrocentric indigenous orientation and past trajectory, enabling participants to actively engage these practices and situate alternative futures. This widens the spectrum within which futures and technologies are co-designed, enabling community participants to actively conceptualise alternative, yet situated, innovations in rural indigenous contexts.

Executive summary

This research evaluates the potential of a decentralized waste-to-energy solution in rural Ghana using anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) of fruit waste and beet molasses. The study aimed to assess technical feasibility and process stability for a secondary school in Bedabour, Ghana.

The methodology involved conducting biological methane potential (BMP) assays to identify the optimal mixture for methane yield. The highest yield was achieved with a blend of 75% fruit waste and 25% molasses. This mixture was then tested in a semi-continuous reactor.

A key finding was that despite the high methane yield, the process faced significant instability due to acidification, and three low-cost mitigation strategies were unable to maintain long-term stability. The conclusion highlights that while AcoD has great potential, its implementation in environments with low buffering capacity requires substrates with higher alkalinity or carefully controlled organic loading rates to ensure consistent performance.