Executive summary

This paper examines the transition to electric mobility (e-mobility) in Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, focusing on the enablers, progress, barriers, and impacts of e-mobility initiatives in a secondary African city. In alignment with Kenya’s commitment to a green economy, Kisumu has emerged as a key site for experimenting and implementing e-mobility solutions aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions while addressing critical transportation and energy challenges. These interventions are essential in the city’s transition towards sustainable urban mobility. The study evaluates key projects which have introduced electric motorcycles and off-grid solar-powered charging hubs in urban and peri-urban regions. The overall goal of these initiatives is to mitigate the adverse environmental footprints of fossil-based vehicles while providing socioeconomic benefits to local operators such as cost reductions and job creation. Using a mixed-method approach of systematic literature review, data collection, and case study evaluations, the paper outlines the progress of e-mobility initiatives in Kisumu highlighting successes, challenges and impacts. It reveals that e-mobility has made some contribution to emissions reductions and financial gains for boda operators while significant hurdles include inadequate infrastructure, high upfront costs, and regulatory shortfalls. The paper concludes with recommendations on how to enable the scale-up of e-mobility initiatives in Kisumu, offering important lessons for secondary cities across sub-Saharan Africa that aspire to integrate e-mobility in their sustainable urban development efforts.

Executive summary

Fuel supply for cooking and heating is one of the major problems in Ghana (Africa). Firewood and liquified  gas petroleum are the most used fuels, but their use has a high environmental impact, due to deforestation and  CO2 emissions. Therefore, more sustainable and accessible energy technologies need to be developed. 

Authors:

Chris Muashekele (AAU), Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (NUST), Kasper Rodil (AAU), Alphons Koruhama (NUST)

Executive summary:

Authors:

Chris Muashekele (AAU), Kasper Rodil (AAU), Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (NUST), Christof Magoath (Donkerbos community)

Executive summary:

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring with a rural San community from the Kalahari desert in Donkerbos, Namibia. Over a series of sessions we explore divergent speculative design and design fiction methods to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the imagination of unorthodox green energy use, superseding interventionist energy use which is constantly propagated and mainstream. We showcase the application of speculative design and design fiction in challenging the dominant interventionist approach and singular temporal view, resulting in a dissentient dual temporality. As well as demonstrate its utility and inadequacies in transitioning an African rural indigenous community into the speculative, arguing for the appropriation and widening of futuring methods in an African context.