Letting Communities Lead

The briefing discusses the risks of top-down rural electrification, citing a failed $100,000 project in India as an example of stranded assets. It proposes that community-led minigrids—designed in partnership with local leadership structures like cooperatives—can lower system costs and electricity prices by 60% from 2018 levels. RMI's Africa Energy Program is implementing the 'Sharing the Power' project over three years in sub-Saharan Africa, with potential testing sites in Nigeria and Ethiopia, to demonstrate how community involvement in planning and operation enhances financial and social sustainability.

• Top-down electrification projects that ignore local leadership and technical capacity risk creating stranded assets; the document cites a 2012 project in east India where a solar minigrid fell into disrepair within months, leaving approximately $100,000 in unusable assets.
• A community-led approach to minigrid development is hypothesized to add value by reducing overall costs and increasing electricity demand for productive uses, potentially lowering system costs and electricity prices by 60% compared to 2018 figures.
• RMI's 'Sharing the Power' project, funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, will implement community-led minigrids across sub-Saharan Africa over three years to test the concept and measure success, with Nigeria and Ethiopia identified as potential testing locations.

APA

RMI (2019). Letting Communities Lead. https://rmi.org/resources/letting-communities-lead/

Chicago

RMI. Letting Communities Lead. 2019. https://rmi.org/resources/letting-communities-lead/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Letting Communities Lead |date=12 November 2019 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/letting-communities-lead/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2019letting, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Letting Communities Lead}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2019}, month = nov, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/letting-communities-lead/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }