More than 560 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. About 384 million live in countries classified by the World Bank as conflict-affected, where poverty, insecurity and weak institutions make large energy infrastructure investments risky.
Mini-grids – often powered by renewable energy – are widely promoted by international development organisations as a solution.
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A mini-grid is a small, local electricity network that operates independently of the main grid to generate and distribute power to a specific area. Mini-grids vary widely in size, from connecting just a few households to connecting thousands of households and businesses.
They provide more reliable, higher-capacity power than the small-scale solar home systems used in fragile or low-income contexts, which often can only power phone chargers or lights. For example, mini-grids can supply enough energy to power small businesses that do milling, refrigeration and welding.
But mini-grids face a circular problem. They need customers to buy the electricity but often face low demand and high operational costs. This can make providing electricity financially unsustainable. At the same time, without electricity, local economies struggle to grow.
This may create a low-demand trap: even when electricity is supplied, if households and businesses cannot afford to buy enough of it for productive activities, the provider cannot earn enough revenue to sustain the service.
Our new study examines how this challenge was addressed in North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region marked by decades of conflict.
We are a team of environmental and development economists who have been conducting field research in the area for more than a decade. This area mostly did not have access to the national grid. Virunga Energies, a private mini-grid operator, constructed four powerplants between 2014 and 2019 using the many rivers there. They set up an independent electricity network across North Kivu to supply power to the city of Goma and nearby towns.
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At the time of our study, this system was the largest electricity provider in North Kivu, which has a population of about 6.6 million people.
We analysed six years of electricity meter data, surveyed 911 households and 291 small businesses, and interviewed Virunga Energies staff to understand how the company manages risk amid uncertain electricity demand.
Our research found that coordinated efforts by public-private partnerships, supported by strategic public and development finance, helped stimulate electricity demand. They encouraged businesses to locate near the mini-grid and helped households to adopt electric appliances.
This means that building a mini-grid is not enough: electricity demand must be actively developed. Without this, many electrification projects in fragile regions risk becoming financially unsustainable.
Studying electricity in a conflict-affected region
Virunga Energies charges above the national utility’s official rate but at the low end of typical mini-grid tariffs in the DR Congo. It sets its prices mainly to cover operating costs, gradually recover investment, and be profitable in the long term. Early donor grants and development finance helped reduce the initial capital burden.
Three patterns stand out.
First, electricity uptake (use) is highly uneven and difficult to predict. This uncertainty makes it difficult for operators to plan grid capacity and investment.
Second, electricity consumption starts small and grows slowly. Connected households typically use enough for lighting, phone charging and a few appliances. Small enterprises consume more, enough to run basic equipment such as refrigeration, milling, or welding tools.
Third, conflict disrupts the demand for electricity. In one town, rebel attacks in 2020 caused electricity consumption to collapse by more than 80%, as most households and business owners temporarily fled the town for safety.
However, usage recovered over the following two years. In Goma, fighting in 2025 caused a sharp but short-lived drop in electricity purchases. Even in insecure environments, electricity demand shows resilience.
Why households aren’t connecting to electricity
Our research found that electricity connection rates varied widely, from nearly 75% in Goma to about 25% in rural areas. Two barriers dominate.
The first is land tenure. Households must provide proof of land ownership to obtain a connection. In eastern DRC, land titles are costly, slow to obtain and often disputed. Many people live in family homes or rented dwellings without formal documents.
The second barrier is affordability. Our research found that the price to connect and electrically wire a house can be over US$200. This is far more than what many households and small enterprises can afford. Our surveys found that most people want electricity but cannot afford the upfront costs.
There isn’t much that can be done to make connection fees cheaper because they’re already partly subsidised by grants and the electricity company’s future earnings. (Connecting a household is costly as it often requires installing new lines, meters, and sometimes even a new pole.)
This helps explain why mini-grids frequently remain stuck in a low-demand trap.
Coordinating a way out of the trap
Rather than waiting for electricity demand to grow naturally, Virunga Energies and its partners actively tried to boost the local economy using electricity.
They set up the Virunga Alliance, a public-private partnership bringing together government authorities, civil society and the private sector. This developed industrial activities such as cocoa processing and soap production near the mini-grid. These created a stable electricity demand while generating local employment.
Electricity is far cheaper than diesel, but firms often used diesel generators because they lacked the funds to buy electrical equipment. To address this, the alliance partnered with a bank to offer microcredit with repayments added to electricity bills. This made it easier to pay and created a strong incentive to repay, since non-payment could lead to temporary disconnection.
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In addition, the company promoted electric cooking, giving away free electric pressure cookers to families. The households saved money by spending less on charcoal, while the electricity company recovered the costs of the cookers as the families bought more electricity.
The company has also sold carbon credits by delivering electricity to local businesses and reducing the amount of diesel being burnt. It also sold power to temporary big electricity users such as Bitcoin mining to use up and make money from extra electricity until local demand increased.
Read more: Why renewable energy ‘mini-grids’ in remote communities fail and how to avoid it
Crucially, these efforts depended on coordinated support. At first, blended finance, combining donor grants and development finance, was used to set up the company.
As demand grew, operations became sustainable. The company was able to borrow money to expand, while development agencies continued to support the rollout of electric cookers.
Coordinate or fail
Three lessons emerge. First, electrification in fragile settings is not just a technical challenge but a coordination problem. Second, breaking the low-demand trap requires infrastructure, finance, enterprise development, land governance and energy policy to work together. Third, government and public–private partnerships play a central role. Electricity cannot be left to the market alone.
Even in one of the world’s most fragile regions, this coordinated approach is beginning to show results. Electricity transforms lives only when it is part of a development strategy that creates opportunities for people to be productive.
Nik Stoop received funding through a scholarship from Research Foundation Flanders.
Elie Lunanga is affiliated with Université Catholique de Bukavu. He received funding through a scholarship from the University of Antwerp's Research Fund.
Marijke Verpoorten receives funding from Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders.
Sébastien Desbureaux worked with the Virunga Alliance from 2019 to 2021, where he led Monitoring and Evaluation activities. He receives funding from the Fond d'Innovation pour le Développement.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
