Jennifer Brass, an associate professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, is part of a group of researchers who have been awarded a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support efforts to engage policymakers in using the electrification of Kenya as a model for other developing countries.
The project, “Electricity Access and Climate Change in Africa: Meeting the challenge through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and early career training,” includes colleagues from Toronto Metropolitan University, Northern Illinois University, and Northeastern University. Since 2019, Brass’s group has studied Kenya’s rapid electrification efforts and their effect on citizens’ political and civic participation, as well as economic and social outcomes.
“In the course of doing that research, we learned that the Kenyan government, international donor organizations, multinational organizations, and other countries’ policymakers were interested in our findings at the individual level,” Brass said. “But they also wanted to know whether Kenya’s electrification strategy and rollout could serve as a model for others. Thus, we decided to do a policy roundtable.”
The effort will include two events. The first will be a formal policy roundtable featuring key international stakeholders in Kenya, including international organizations engaged in African electricity transitions, such as the World Bank and African Development Bank; Kenyan national government representatives from the Ministry of Energy and the Kenyan Power Corporation; bilateral organizations, such as representatives from the Canadian High Commission and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC); and key non-government organizations, like Kenyan Renewable Energy.
Brass and her colleagues will also hold a two-day early-career researcher workshop, focused on research design, methods, and collaboration.
“Early-career researchers face serious barriers to career advancement and knowledge mobilization,” Brass said. “This is especially true in Africa. This workshop will support early-career researchers in gaining critical insights into their research, drawing lessons from leading social science research in Africa, and laying the foundation for a network of early-career researchers in Kenya and North America that can evolve into a larger community for collaboration and cooperation.
Brass is conducting further analysis on whether Kenya can serve as a model for other countries, while also examining how individuals perceive the electrification process and its outcomes.
“We have gathered enough data for many, many papers and hopefully at least a book or two,” Brass said. “Practically, we hope to have a better sense of what it means to gain access to electricity for lower-income households in Africa and other countries. Does it change behavior? Does it matter how much electricity people have access to, or the quality of that electricity? Are results short-term or do they tend to last? Answering those questions is going to be a focus in the future.”