Making energy justice work for women in rural sub-Saharan Africa: A quantitative diagnostic from Benin, Senegal, and Togo

Abstract

Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from an extensive survey of 2291 rural households in three West African countries, this article adopts normative framework based on the energy justice framework (EJF) as well as on the capability approach to identify situations of injustice with vulnerable groups and specific interventions to improve the conditions of this group. It operationalizes and discusses the concepts of availability, affordability, due process, transparency and accountability as well as sustainability with a perspective on gender equity. Accordingly, our study adopts both an ex-ante (the framework informing evidence) and an ex-post (evidence informing the framework) approach. The results show that a capability approach to energy justice requires a bottom-up, individualistic approach that allows a better identification of energy injustices. For instance, the evidence based on an original operationalization of energy availability considering opportunity costs shows that women have less access to energy and are more exposed to health problems than their male counterparts; this proposition also results in a picture showing more energy poverty than previously known. Also, their limited involvement in energy-related decision-making in the household further perpetuates the vicious cycle of time poverty, income poverty and energy poverty. Furthermore, without specific improvements in social justice for women in rural areas, increasing electricity access in rural areas is unlikely to translate into more energy justice as well as more capabilities for women; in effect, social injustices tend to block the material gains. From a policy perspective, the main recommendation focuses on women and targets the elimination of the ‘worse-case scenario’, that is, the least efficient cookstoves with fetched fuelwood for increasing the capabilities of women and improve the overall energy justice in West African countries.