Electricity Autonomy and Power Grids in Africa: from Rural Experiments to Urban Hybridizations

Abstract : The chapter presents the context of off-grid projects in sub-Saharan Africa, justified by the “crisis” of centralized systems in a continental context of power shortage, and their expected contribution to the electrification of the continent. It shows that the future of off-grid solutions is not sealed: while their economic models have yet to be invented in rural areas, decentralized solutions, circulating according to long and short-range market channels, are already part of urban dwellers’ daily lives. The conclusion returns to the singularity of an African physiognomy of electrical autonomy and the prospects for hybridization in urban areas connected to the grid.