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The document details a green economy initiative in two Cape Town informal settlements, Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp, where GreenCape and iSolar Ngoku are deploying solar home systems. The project aims to address a 30-year lack of formal electricity while fostering local employment through the training of community members as installers. The model uses a paid-service approach to ensure ownership and funds a community resource pool.

This policy brief by GreenCape argues that building urban resilience in informal settlements requires a participatory co-design approach driven by facilitators with high emotional intelligence and specific core values. Using a case study of the Alternative Service Delivery Unit (ASDU) in Cape Town's Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp, the document demonstrates how a data-driven, four-step engagement process can lead to community-supported infrastructure, such as home-solar systems. It details the necessary human capital for project drivers, emphasizing trust, collaboration, and active facilitation as essential for overcoming systemic distrust and social vulnerability.

The Alternative Service Delivery Unit (ASDU), implemented by GreenCape, uses an adaptive co-design framework to provide energy services to unserviced communities. In Malawi Camp, Cape Town, a community of over 1,000 people with no formal electricity, residents identified home-level electricity, food storage (fridges), and area lighting for safety as their primary priorities. While residents expressed a willingness to pay between R50 and R100 per month for these services with the goal of eventual ownership, the document notes that the upcoming relocation of the community to a formal housing development on Symphony Way may decrease the business case for off-grid solutions.

The document proposes a 'data and domain' approach to resilient urbanism, where measurable shared data and asset-based community participation intersect to drive inclusive public engagement. It details a methodology for community-led enumeration—collecting socio-economic and demographic data—and using that data to ground participatory co-design workshops. A case study of GreenCape's Alternative Service Delivery Unit (ASDU) in the Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp informal settlements in Cape Town demonstrates this process, resulting in the selection of a solar PV micro-utility solution tailored to the community's specific needs, affordability (maximum R150 monthly payment), and desire for portability.

This document is a Terms of Reference (TOR) issued by the GreenCape Sector Development Agency for the provision of energy services to the Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp communities in Cape Town. The project, managed by the Alternative Service Delivery Unit (ASDU) and partnered with Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), aims to provide sustainable electrification to approximately 950 homes, promote community empowerment, and create local jobs between April 2020 and December 2022.