Projekt

Global commitments to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people living in so far non-connected areas in developing countries has risen substantially through the launch of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All initiative in 2011. The investment requirements are considerable in order to meet the goal of universal access to electricity in 2030. Most of the commitment is sourced from multilateral development banks and direct government sources. The GIZ in cooperation with the Senegalese Ministry of Energy implements the program Electrification Rurale Sénégal (ERSEN) in Senegal, which installs mini-grids in villages not foreseen for on-grid electrification. RWI assesses the impacts of the mini-grids on socio-economic outcomes within villages and analyses the sustainability of the mini-grids. Beyond this, the study focuses particularly on the joint effect of electricity and micro-finance. Complementarily providing these two services is frequently seen as a panacea to overcome business development bottlenecks in rural areas. The study’s strategy to identify impacts is a difference-in-difference approach combined with a randomized phasing-in of micro-finance services. For this purpose, a baseline survey was conducted in 2014 among around 90 GIZ villages and the same number of control villages, which are not going to be electrified in the next few years. All villages will be revisited in a follow-up survey in 2016. By then, the treatment group villages are expected to be electrified. After the baseline survey and in cooperation with micro-finance institutions, micro-finance services will be introduced randomly in the villages. In order to assess the effects of micro-finance access and the sustainability of the mini-grids a village level survey will be administered. Qualitative methods such as focus group discussions and case studies complement the approach.

Projektstart:
01. September 2013

Projektende:
31. Dezember 2016

Projektmitarbeitende:
Prof. Dr. Jörg Peters, Dr. Maximiliane Sievert, Jörg Langbein

Projektpartner:
Université de Gaston Berger, Partenariat pour la Mobilisation de l'Espargne et le Crédit Au Sénégal, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH

Förderung:
Netherlands Development Finance Company