NEED FOR ELECTRIC ENERGY DEMOCRATISATION IN MALAWI

The Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) III places electric energy in the top three priority areas. However, 2018 Malawi Population and Housing Census Report shows that ESCOM is only able to service 453,592 households against 3,984,981 who are in dire need of electricity. The Government of Malawi believes that private investment is a solution to meet power sector goals.

Malawian rural communities face a disparity in terms of access to electric service provision due to geographical remoteness, high cost of grid connection, inability to pay for services, and limited access to providers of renewable energy solutions. The Malawi Energy Policy, however, promotes micro-grids as one way of accelerating electrification in locations where grid extension cannot be an economically viable electrification approach.  The Government of Malawi intends to increase installed electricity capacity to around 719 MW by 2020 and increase access to electricity to around 30% of the population by 2030. The government believes that with private sector participation in the power sector, the set targets in installed capacity and access to electricity are achievable.

The importance of supplying secure, equitable and environmentally sustainable energy to all in line with Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be overemphasized. Failure to do so, with the sense of urgency that it deserves, will only serve to further strain the already crippled manufacturing base and general socio-economic development. In my eight-year stint with ESCOM, I have witnessed firsthand the benefits which energy brings at household, community and national level as well as the downside of this too.

Energy democracy is a novel concept, an emergent social movement, and a decision-making tool that connects energy infrastructural change with the possibilities for deep political, economic, and social change. Energy democracy has been characterized as involving three related but discrete approaches to facilitating renewable energy transformation; energy democracy includes efforts to resist, reclaim, and restructure energy systems. Resisting the legacy centralized energy systems is key to the energy democracy movement, as is reclaiming energy systems for more distributed economic and political benefits and restructuring energy systems to support the types of democratic relationships necessary for community-based decision-making authority (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00043/full)