Make Electrons Generic Again (MEGA)

Why the next leap in Africa’s energy story must be about agency, not just access

(Image created with DALL.E 3)

This June, I spoke at the Acumen Energy Summit in Nairobi, where I was asked to share a “bold vision” for what Africa’s energy future could look like by 2040. My talk, titled “Vision 2040: Agency for All,” builds on ideas I first explored here on Kibao in last year’s essay Choice and Agency in Energy Access. That piece argued that true energy progress isn’t just about supplying electrons or even delivering services, it’s about enabling people to choose and create with energy on their own terms. In Nairobi, I had the chance to stretch that idea forward: what might an African energy system built on agency—not just access—look like in 2040? Below is a short summary of the main points, with a link to the full remarks at the end of the piece.

Energy access is not energy agency

1. Access is not enough. The energy access community has made real progress, moving from thinking in terms of simply delivering electrons to enabling energy services like lighting, cooling, and entertainment. But that still falls short.

2. Agency is Missing. Whether we’re measuring connections, kilowatt-hours, or appliance ownership, we often default to fixed assumptions about what energy users “should” want. We speak in terms of energy ladders and stepwise progressions from basic lighting and mobile phone chargers, to radios and TVs, and eventually to refrigerators and air conditioners.

3. Real lives are nonlinear. People make diverse, sometimes surprising choices based on their needs and constraints. Growing up in Nairobi, for example, my family had no fridge or radio for years—but we did have a desktop computer and an early laptop long before most American households had either. Our household’s energy logic would have baffled a development planner.

Four conditions needed to make energy agency real

1. Energy should be invisible. In mature economies, electricity is ubiquitous and invisible—accessible with the mere flick of a switch or the push of a plug. In many African contexts, the opposite is true: people juggle unreliable grids, generators, solar kits, batteries, and more. Each comes with different costs, rules, supply chains, user interfaces. Energy agency means flipping that burden from the user to the system, so people can spend their time using energy, not managing it.

2. Systems must be interoperable. As new energy access technologies proliferate across Africa, bringing much needed energy access to previously unserved communities, consumers are increasingly locked into inflexible systems. Solar kits run on proprietary platforms. Mini-grids don’t integrate with the main grid. Appliances work with one set up but not another. True agency requires mix-and-match freedom—the ability to plug and play across technologies and platforms. In other words: Make Electrons Generic Again (MEGA!).

3. Economic agency comes first. The golden rule of energy agency is simple: increase household incomes. Poorer households have fewer options, both within and beyond the energy sector. The poverty constraint is often underestimated. For context, GDP per capita (in today’s dollars) in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda today is still several times lower than it was in the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s when those regions were rapidly electrifying and expanding rural access. Instead of getting stuck in circular arguments over whether to prioritize productive uses (like powering businesses and industries) or household access, we should instead ask: First: How do we lift people out of extreme energy poverty both at home and in their communities? Second: How do we make people less poor?

4. Let people choose (even when you don’t like their choices). Above all, people must be free to decide how to use energy, whether we may deem those purposes “serious” or “frivolous.” In wealthy countries, no one questions whether electricity powers an air conditioner during a heatwave or a video game console on a Saturday night. Yet in development debates, people’s choices are often judged: why a TV and not a fan? Why a sound system and not a fridge? Real agency means respecting people’s priorities. Constraints will always exist—budgets, sustainability, system limits—but within those, the choice should be theirs.

By 2040, the goal should not be universal access alone, but universal agency. Let’s build systems that offer people affordability, usability, and real choice.

Full remarks as delivered available here.