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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 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.

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 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.

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.

For all partner cities or counties, demonstration implementation plans (at least 5) will be developed (Task 4.1). By bringing together the knowledge gained in WP1, WP3 and linking to the activities planned in WP2, the plans will outline concrete steps for the ​demonstration phase helping to set the base for a successful implementation. The plans will include 1 modular living lab demonstration plan in Kenya, and 4 validation demonstration plans in Morocco, Ghana, Malawi and South Africa.

Deliverable D3.2 provides a guideline of the desired functional requirements of the main energy technologies (energy innovations) that could possibly be deployed in the Living Labs. The functional requirements are identified, based on international standards (when applicable), and cover: system description, technical constraints, advanced functionalities, expected performance, operation and maintenance, reliability and expected costs of the solutions.

The present document is a complete and partner-validated draft of the Sustainable Energy Solutions catalogue which will be made available to the public in 2023 in a professionally designed publication format. The catalogue is composed of ten factsheets. Each factsheet focuses on a specific sustainable energy solution or cross-cutting aspect that is relevant within the SESA Living Labs. Factsheets cover both technological and business aspects of the solution, as well as other key dimensions that are relevant for the target audiences.

The Collection of good practices from the SESA capacity building activities report (D2.6) provides an overview of the best cases and good practices learned via or directly created by the project in its capacity building activities. This document aims to serve as an inspiration for demonstration countries/cities and other organization or projects working with the knowledge transfer, stakeholders’ engagement.

The Capacity Building Tools and Updates report (D2.2) provides an overview of the capacity building tools and methodologies that is being developed by SESA project partners under Work Package 2 (WP2): Capacity building, city-to-city cooperation and professional development. Task 2.2 (T2.2) Capacity tools and methodologies aims to offer capacity-building activities for professionals in the living labs and beyond, focusing on individual technical aspects related to the demonstration projects, business models, finance options, vision building, emerging ecosystems, and policy frameworks.