Publication: Democracy and the Distribution of NGOs Promoting Renewable Energy in Africa
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Published
2015-06-05
ISSN
0022-0388
Date
2015-09-21
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Roughly 60 per cent of Africans lack access to electricity, negatively impacting development opportunities. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have started promoting distributed generation – small-scale, localized electricity generation – to change this situation. Despite widespread need, however, the dispersion of these distributed generation NGOs (DG-NGOs) is uneven, with high concentrations in a few African countries. Drawing on an original database and field research, the authors analyze location variation among DG-NGOs across the continent. This article finds that DG-NGOs are likely to operate in democratic settings with large populations that lack access to electricity. International DG-NGOs are also likely to operate where aid allocation levels are relatively high.
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