Electrician Morithi Manasoe Working On Putting in Photo voltaic Panels. Photograph: Equipped
A peer-reviewed examine monitoring 1 371 rural households in Malawi’s Lilongwe District has discovered that the nation’s quickly increasing off-grid photo voltaic sector is systematically bypassing its poorest residents, elevating questions on electrification targets promoted by the federal government and worldwide growth companions.
The analysis, printed in August 2025 within the journal Vitality Analysis & Social Science, was performed by students from the College of Michigan, Duke College, Harvard College and Lilongwe College of Agriculture and Pure Assets.
The examine discovered that wealthier households had been 2.51 instances extra prone to undertake a photo voltaic dwelling system than poorer households.
Even when techniques had been put in, their capability was extraordinarily restricted. The median photo voltaic system throughout the pattern produced simply six watts, barely above the five-watt threshold utilized by the World Financial institution to categorise Tier 1 electrical energy entry. At that degree, electrical energy usually helps little greater than cellphone charging and a single dim gentle.
Almost 29% of households that owned photo voltaic units deserted them inside 12 months, elevating issues about reliability, affordability and long-term usability.
Malawi has one of many lowest electrical energy entry charges on this planet. In response to the Worldwide Vitality Company, solely 14% of Malawians had electrical energy entry in 2022, with rural entry at 5.6%. Information from the World Financial institution locations rural entry barely increased, at 6.1% in 2023.
In response, governments, growth banks and personal corporations have more and more promoted off-grid photo voltaic know-how because the quickest path to rural electrification throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
However the brand new examine, led by researcher Thomas Mahieu, challenges that narrative. Drawing on two survey waves performed between 2022 and 2023, the researchers discovered that photo voltaic growth is happening however at ranges which may not translate into significant power entry.
By the top of the examine interval, 33.7% of households owned at the very least one photo voltaic system, representing a 4.5 percentage-point enhance over 12 months.
On paper, the expansion seems encouraging. However the researchers warning that possession alone is a poor indicator of actual electrical energy entry. The central concern isn’t whether or not households personal photo voltaic units however how a lot energy these units present.
The Vitality Sector Administration Help Programme classifies Tier 1 electrical energy entry as techniques delivering 5 to 50 watts, enough for fundamental lighting and cellphone charging. Tier 2, above 50 watts, permits households to run small home equipment equivalent to TVs or followers.
Within the Malawi examine, solely 11% of solar-owning households reached Tier 2. The remaining 89% remained at Tier 1 or beneath, utilizing techniques too weak to energy productive home equipment, assist small companies or present dependable lighting for college kids.
Initially of the examine, 75% of households had no qualifying electrical energy entry — outlined as lower than 5 watts of photo voltaic capability. After a 12 months of sector progress, 70% remained in that class.
The researchers warn towards conflating photo voltaic possession with significant enhancements in dwelling requirements.
“Policymakers ought to be cautious to imagine that binary indicators of photo voltaic possession replicate power entry that helps main enhancements in high quality of life,” the authors write.
They notice that assuming photo voltaic possession routinely delivers significant power companies is “misguided”. The examine’s most consequential discovering issues the distribution of photo voltaic entry.
Wealthier households had been 2.51 instances extra prone to undertake photo voltaic dwelling techniques and 1.84 instances extra prone to undertake standalone photo voltaic panels than poorer households.
Monetary inclusion additionally proved decisive. Households with entry to financial institution accounts, casual financial savings teams or cell cash companies had been 2.41 instances extra prone to personal a photo voltaic dwelling system.
The result’s a structural paradox: applied sciences promoted as options to power poverty are being adopted primarily by these least affected by it. Malawi’s expertise mirrors a broader regional sample.
The Worldwide Vitality Company (IEA) says sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 83.3% of the worldwide electrical energy entry deficit in 2022, up from 49.6% in 2010, whilst different areas have made fast progress.
The paradox is placing. Africa holds about 60% of the world’s finest photo voltaic assets, but 51% of its inhabitants lacks electrical energy.
To realize common entry by 2030, the IEA estimates that electrification charges should triple and funding should double throughout the continent. The examine additionally highlights a phenomenon hardly ever mentioned in power coverage debates: photo voltaic disadoption.
Amongst households that owned photo voltaic units, 28.6% had fewer units after one 12 months than firstly of the examine, indicating a contraction in power entry. Amongst house owners of standalone photo voltaic panels, the disadoption fee reached 40.1%.
Households abandoning techniques usually fell from Tier 1 again to Tier 0, shedding even the restricted power companies beforehand accessible. Respondents cited system faults, unaffordable prices and declining want as causes for abandoning techniques.
Earlier analysis in Malawi and elsewhere within the area has recognized further structural points, together with poor product high quality, difficulties sustaining pay-as-you-go funds and a scarcity of restore technicians.
A 2020 examine by researcher Shanil Samarakoon, additionally printed in Vitality Analysis & Social Science, discovered that many defective photo voltaic techniques in Malawi stay unrepaired due to restricted technical experience.
The examine concluded that the nation’s off-grid photo voltaic market “doesn’t provide a sustainable answer to power poverty, as a substitute reinforcing socioeconomic inequities”.
The analysis additionally recognized notable gender dynamics. Feminine-headed households had been almost 4 instances extra prone to personal a photo voltaic dwelling system than male-headed households. The researchers recommend this may replicate focused advertising and marketing campaigns by photo voltaic corporations.
On the similar time, female-headed households had been 55% much less prone to personal standalone photo voltaic panels, which have a tendency to supply extra energy per watt however are often offered with out pay-as-you-go financing.
The researchers query whether or not the advertising and marketing methods genuinely develop girls’s power entry or as a substitute channel them towards debt-financed merchandise that may be tough to maintain.
To stimulate Malawi’s off-grid photo voltaic market, the federal government and the World Financial institution launched the Ngwee Ngwee Ngwee Fund, a $20 million (about R330m) market-development programme combining a $6-million results-based financing grant with a $14m debt facility.
The fund helps 5 photo voltaic corporations: Yellow Photo voltaic, Zuwa Vitality, Inexperienced Influence Applied sciences, VITALITE Group and StarTimes Media.
Its preliminary goal was 200 000 new rural family connections by June 2024. In response to programme data, the goal was reached in October 2024, with greater than 900 000 beneficiaries reported.
Nonetheless, the unbiased family information collected within the examine seems tough to reconcile with these figures. In Lilongwe District, the place corporations supported by the fund function, the researchers recorded solely a 4.5 percentage-point enhance in photo voltaic possession throughout the examine interval.
Questions on Malawi’s electrification progress prolong past the photo voltaic market. In early 2025, former power minister Ibrahim Matola advised parliament that rural electrical energy entry had reached 25%, almost triple the extent recorded in 2020. That declare contrasts sharply with World Financial institution estimates putting rural entry at 6.1% in 2023.
Infrastructure supply has additionally lagged behind targets. The federal government’s Marep Part 9 rural electrification programme, supposed to attach 460 buying and selling centres by 2024, had related solely 140 websites by September 2024 after lacking two earlier deadlines.
Challenge prices additionally rose considerably, rising from 40 billion Malawian kwacha (about R380m) to 70 billion kwacha, partly attributable to forex devaluation. The findings feed right into a wider debate about how electrical energy entry is measured globally.
Present reporting by the United Nations, the IEA and the World Financial institution counts households with as little as three watts of photo voltaic capability as having electrical energy entry.
The Malawi examine means that threshold could also be overly optimistic. With a median photo voltaic capability of six watts, most households within the survey might do little greater than cost a cellphone and energy a single gentle bulb.
World information factors to comparable limitations. The Vitality Sector Administration Help Programme and the World Off-Grid Lighting Affiliation estimate that solely 158 million of the 490 million individuals served by off-grid photo voltaic worldwide use techniques assembly worldwide high quality requirements.
The central coverage query confronting governments, growth banks and photo voltaic corporations is whether or not market-driven deployment fashions can attain the poorest households with out direct subsidies.
The proof rising from Malawi means that they can not.
