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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.

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.

Technology solutions in rural indigenous African contexts are too often grounded in top-down, needs-based development approaches. Participatory methods, such as Community-based Co-Design, oppose such tendencies and emphasise the participation of communities in the technology design process as culturally-situated experts. We extend and reflect on this premise by exploring the sequential co-design of a digital innovation game with a rural indigenous San community in Namibia as a base for alternative indigenous technology design and futuring.

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.

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.

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.

This paper presents the co-design and deployment of a culturally contextualized mobile interface aimed at enhancing transparency in an AI- and IoT-enabled hydroponics system within the Indigenous San community in Donkerbos, Namibia. Building on a previously implemented AI-driven hydroponic system developed in South Africa, the project introduces a web-based application tailored to local needs through Community-Based Co-Design (CBCD).

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.

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring in two indigenous ovaHimba communities in northwest Namibia. Over a series of sessions, we, as part of a broad green energy access project, explore futuring to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the opposition of the dominant needs-based and interventionist approach and imagination of unorthodox green energy utilisation that supersedes mainstream, rudimentary and obvious energy use. We reflect on the application of futuring, particularly speculative design, in an indigenous context, highlighting the communities’ back-looking future perspective, and relevance and influence of ancestry and culture over the future. As well as accentuate the friction towards speculative design, arguing for its appropriation and alignment to a more grounded design approach. Moreover, we indicate the agency that it provides, allowing local participants to re-evaluate their values and practices and simultaneously determine the integration of technology into the future.

This research evaluated 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.

This document explains how SESA will ensure that the project is compliant with European Commission Ethics Requirements (General - GEN)

This document explains how SESA will ensure that the project is compliant with European Commission Ethics Requirements (Non-EU Countries - NEC)

This document explains how SESA will ensure that the project is compliant with European Commission Ethics Requirements (Processing of Personal Data - POPD)

This document explains how SESA will ensure that the project is compliant with European Commission Ethics Requirements (Humans)

A Data Management Plan will be a living document that will present the status of the project’s reflections on data management. Purpose of the document is to provide detailed information on the informed consent procedures that will be implemented regarding the collection, storage and protection of personal data that might be collected in the activities of stakeholder engagement throughout the project. The Plan will take into consideration the different methods used and purposes used for data collection and provide partners to ensure the legal compliance.

This document will present a detailed risk management plan acknowledging the probability of occurrence of identified risks or the emergence of new one establishing avoidance and mitigation actions. The plan, periodically reassessed and discussed with the Steering Group, will include an adequate measurement method of progress (risk indicators) as well as the “acceptability level” of each risk. The risks analysis will be based on the traditional “level of impact x probability of occurrence” approaches (scale 1-5).

This document explains the SESA project management plan and governance structure.

This deliverable summarises the SESA project's cooperation with other EU-funded initiatives to enhance sustainable energy development in Africa. The strategy underscores the importance of collaboration among projects like ENERGICA, REFFECT AFRICA, SophiA, SteamBioAfrica, LEAP-RE, and SolutionsPlus, which share the common goal of accelerating the green transition and energy access across the continent.

A sound and coherent strategy will be delivered to ensure an effective outreach, exploitation, dissemination and communication of the project and its wide impact. The document will include information about the visual identity of the project considering also the country specificities, identifies relevant channels and set an appropriate timeline that will also secure the engagement of all project partners and their networks. The document will be further updated to include the inputs received and adjust the strategy as needed to guarantee its success.

This report seeks to provide guidance for creating enabling policy frameworks for selected smart energy technologies in African countries. It presents nine case studies from various contexts, each focusing on a different technology. Based on findings of the barrier analysis developed as part of the SESA project, this report supports the development of policy roadmaps and identifies good practice policies for each case study, proposing specific policy solutions to address the identified challenges. Thus, the report encourages national governments to initiate their own policy road mapping processes, while the case studies presented in this report can be seen as starting points for indepth discussions and policy implementation.

This report covers barriers and policy gaps identified through a literature survey and stakeholder consultations for nine technologies in demonstration and validation countries (referred to as case studies); Productive Use of Solar Energy (PUE), and Electric Mobility (E-mobility) in Kenya, Clean Cooking in Malawi, Second-Life Use of EV Batteries in South Africa, PVs for Household use, and E-mobility in Morocco, Second-life Battery Use as Energy Storage for Solar Photo-voltaic Systems, and Bio-ethanol Technology for Cooking in Ghana, and Solar Irrigation in Rwanda.

D5.1 aimed to gather a minimum of 10 scale-up concept projects to develop them into project proposals for transformational, innovative, and integrated sustainable energy projects. Four of these concepts were further supported with pre-feasibility studies that follow the requirements of targeted financial institutions.

The deliverable D4.4 ‘Report on replication roadmaps for (at least 4) sites’ consists of the highlights and main outcomes from the three regional workshops conducted individually with demonstration, validation, and replication partners involved. This deliverable also documents the methodology used in the three regional workshops. The methodology has evolved gradually in the three workshops to cater to the target audience. The deliverable is an easy-to-navigate document that highlights the methodologies, learnings, and outcomes from the workshops. The sequential implementation of the activities around the workshops is presented as replication roadmaps and developed into a three-phase replication approach. This can be used as an inspiration and guidance in future replication and exploitation.

This report presents a consolidated summary of five demonstration actions implemented under the SESA project across Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Ghana, and Malawi. Each site tested context-specific renewable energy solutions ranging from solar microgrids and mobility hubs to clean cooking technologies aimed at improving energy access and community resilience. The report outlines the solutions employed, preliminary results achieved, challenges encountered, and lessons learned across the five contexts. It also offers practical recommendations for further development, with a focus on local capacity building, inclusive business models, and partnerships essential for scaling sustainable energy innovations across Africa.

This document summarizes the on-going activities of Work Package 4 and outlines the key aspects of the demonstration actions in the modular living lab demonstration in Kenya, 4 validation demos in Morocco, Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa; and outlines the set-up of the SESA regional platforms. This document builds on D4.1 by providing project updates until September 2022.