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Survey of productive uses of electricity in rural areas

11am, July 30th, 2015

This paper, survey of productive uses of electricity in rural areas, proposes a survey to help inform the World Bank‘s practices in its client countries.

The objective of the assignment is to survey and summarize the published literature as well as informal knowledge about the experience with promoting productive uses of electricity in the rural areas of the World Bank’s client countries. This should include projects not financed by the Bank, as well as relevant projects / analysis undertaken by non-energy experts, and to be done through the following two tasks:

  • Discuss with a wide spectrum of relevant people their knowledge of the successes, failure and impacts of promoting productive uses of electricity in the rural areas of developing countries.
  • Collect and classify the available formal and informal knowledge with a view to determining what additional elements could be included in future Bank-financed rural electrification projects.

An overriding theme of this endeavor is to go beyond anecdotal descriptions of productive use, and begin to establish a baseline of experience and knowledge. To this end, the survey would be structured around two broad questions:

  • What has been the project experience?
  • What are the major lessons and emerging themes?

Topics of the survey include:

  • Grid-based Systems
  • Independent mini-grids
  • Stand alone systems
  • Bank-productive use projects
  • Rural transport
  • Rural water Supply and sanitation
  • Institutional models

Read Survey of productive uses of electricity in rural areas.

Institutions Involved

  • The World Bank

Authors

Robert E. Fishbein
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