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Publications

Informal electricity as a system: rethinking energy governance in urban informal settlements

The piece examines why 86% of households in Nairobi's Mathare settlement still rely on informal electricity connections despite years of formal electrification efforts. Drawing on a systems mapping exercise and stakeholder workshop with residents, community leaders, resellers, and utility representatives, it frames this not as simple "illegality" but as a "wicked problem", shaped by affordability, marginalisation, and years of strained trust between communities and the utility.

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Informal smart urbanism: A case study of digital resilience in Mathare informal settlement

Our study analyses digital resilience practices—the everyday ways households respond to shocks through digital technologies. These practices are widespread but often overlooked, especially given the vulnerabilities inherent in informal settings. We explore how repetitive digital practices form extra-legal rules.

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Platforms for the urban poor: Platform frugality in Mathare informal settlement

Limited attention has been paid to platforms in informal settlements, where residents face multiple, simultaneous resource constraints. We address this challenge by elucidating how informal settlement residents use platforms to address resource constraints and by identifying limitations to platform deployment.

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Communiqué-Sustainable Charcoal Transitions workshop

This communiqué summarises key messages emerging from a high-level workshop convened by the International Renewable Energy Agency, Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research and University College London with support from the Climate Compatible Growth programme and the British Academy on 17-18 February 2026 in Limuru, Kenya.

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Informal smart urbanism: A case study of digital resilience in Mathare informal settlement

Our study analyses digital resilience practices—the everyday ways households respond to shocks through digital technologies. These practices are widespread but often overlooked, especially given the vulnerabilities inherent in informal settings. We explore how repetitive digital practices form extra-legal rules.

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Platforms for the urban poor: Platform frugality in Mathare informal settlement

Limited attention has been paid to platforms in informal settlements, where residents face multiple, simultaneous resource constraints. We address this challenge by elucidating how informal settlement residents use platforms to address resource constraints and by identifying limitations to platform deployment.

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Electricity Challenge in Mathare Through A System Thinking Lens

Have you ever wondered why, after so many programs and promises, most of us still rely on informal electricity connections? Why does the situation seem to get worse, not better? Why do solutions that sound good on paper fail in Mathare?

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Co-Creating a Policy and Action Agenda for Sustainable Charcoal Transitions

The two-day workshop convened close to 30 participants, including senior government, experienced researchers and practitioners in the clean cooking sector, international organisations and donor agencies, actors from the private sector and financial institutions, and civil-society groups.

Graphic Recording

This graphic recording is a summary of the Co-Creating a Policy and Action Agenda for Sustainable Charcoal Transitions workshop. The workshop revealed a strong, shared recognition that charcoal is central to Africa’s energy, both at present and into the future.

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Systems thinking for communities - Telling your story in systems

Mathare is a complex system including villages, diverse communities, a network of formal and informal supply of energy, many independent businesses, social hubs, and local leadership structures.

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Tracing the Influence of Energy Modelling on Kenya's Policy Landscape

This brief outlines: How international collaborations influence energy planning in Kenya, Some dynamics around tool choice and scenario development and Issues around energy modelling capacity development.

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Nuvoni 2024 Annual Report

This year reaffirmed the importance of focusing on issues central to our region: energy transitions, urban development, agrifood systems and technology management. Across all these domains, our themes of resilience, inclusion, frugality, governance and informality have remained our compass.

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System Dynamics in Energy Transitions: Understanding Complexity and Driving Engagement

Systems-based approaches are gaining traction as a way to integrate socio-political, socioeconomic, and techno-economic considerations and enable collaborative and fair practices in sustainable transitions

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Strengthening commercial viability through greater inclusiveness in rural mini-grid deployment: Insights from Nigeria and Kenya

Amidst the prevalence of energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, mini grids have emerged in recent years as a promising solution, not only to bridge lingering electricity access gaps, but also to revitalise rural economies.

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Guidelines for Inclusive and Equitable Energy and Transport modeling

This perspective presents guidelines, developed through a collaborative process informed by a scoping literature review and expert consultation with modelers and social scientists, for integrating GESI into large-scale energy and transport systems modeling processes, particularly in low- and lower middle-income countries.

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The political economy of least cost power planning in Kenya

In sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is considered one of the frontier countries in developing long-term energy plans, locally known as Least Cost Power Development Plans (LCPDP). This paper scopes out how the 1) actors, interests and power dynamics, 2) the institutions and policy, and 3) decision making and implementation practices underpinning the electricity sub-sector in Kenya shape the LCPDP processes.

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Mini-Grid Sustainability Framework and its Application to Selected Mini-Grids in Kenya

This paper presents an indicator-based framework for the sustainability analysis of mini-grids and applies this to a selection of mini-grids in Kenya. Although various frameworks exist, they have been criticised for lack of attention to long-term perspectives, high data needs, prescriptive nature of the attributes and limited user-friendliness.

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Digital Public Spaces for Youth Engagement in Informal Settlements

Public participation in all its forms is continually limited amongst the marginalized, especially those living in informal settlements. While the right to participate in decision-making on policy and development projects is enshrined in state laws, the urban poor continue to be excluded from such activities, thereby limiting their democratic rights. Inadequate public spaces are one factor that minimalizes the urban community’s participation in citywide proposals.

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Kenya National eCooking Baseline Study Report

This report is the output of the Kenya National eCooking Study (KNeCS) which analyses the status of electric cooking in Kenya with the view of supporting the development of the Kenya National eCooking Strategy aimed at accelerating the adoption of electricity as a cooking fuel. This study examines the state of household electrification and access to eCooking in Kenya based on primary and secondary collected between December 2022 and April 2023.

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Accelerating the Electrification of Cooking in Kenya’s Urban Informal Settlements

The report evaluates the potential for adopting electric cooking (eCooking) among households and food businesses in Nairobi’s informal settlements, particularly Mathare. Using household surveys, cooking diaries, market mapping, vendor interviews, and appliance testing (notably electric pressure cookers), it explores existing cooking practices, electricity access (formal vs informal), barriers like cost, safety, and awareness, and market constraints.

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CIRCULAR COMMUNITIES AS A DRIVER FOR NAIROBI’S RIVER REGENERATION: an urgent call for climate adaptability through multiple value creation

This report provides a clear and accessible overview of the multi-stakeholder workshop that was held on 28th of March 2025 in Nairobi. The workshop was organized by Nuvoni Centre for Research, Leiden Delft Erasmus universities (Netherlands) and the Circular Community Foundation and funded by LDE Global.

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KNeCS Strategy Modelling Report

This document details the modelling approaches and findings used to inform the interventions within the eCooking Strategy. It utilises data collected during the KNeCS Baseline Study (2023), and is designed to explore key research questions that have emerged during the strategy development process.

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Digital Hubs Proposal to ICTA

This proposal provides a comprehensive description of the form and design that digital hubs should adopt in Mathare informal settlement. The case is built following a critical analysis of the findings of the study on “Digital employment and training centres in informal in settlements’ piloted in Mathare.

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City-wide Co-creation Workshop Report

The Digital Hubs co-creation workshop was conducted on 18th June 2024 at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Westlands, Nairobi. It was hosted by Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research (NCIR).

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Scaling digital hubs across informal settlements in Kenya: Social surveys and Co-creation

This policy paper offers a step-by-step approach to co-create digital hubs in informal settlements, gain trust in the process and adjust their governance and activities to the local context.

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Guideline to co-create digital hubs in informal settlements: lessons learned from international literature

This paper offers a literature review to describe the existing knowledge on digital hubs in informal settlements. It aims to offer a practical guide on how to co-create digital employment hubs, questioning what problems they address, what their objectives are, and what activities, and governance structures they employ.

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Our cities have failed … decolonizing urban planning in the Afrocentric

Africa is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate, presenting unique challenges in managing and planning for urban development. This article by Beatrice Hati Gitundu and Alice Menya emphasizes that continuing with conventional planning approaches, which have historically reproduced marginalization, is no longer tenable.

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Adaptive governance by community based organisations: Community resilience initiatives during Covid-19 in Mathare, Nairobi

This paper offers a literature review to describe the existing knowledge on digital hubs in informal settlements. It aims to offer a practical guide on how to co-create digital employment hubs, questioning what problems they address, what their objectives are, and what activities, and governance structures they employ.

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Frugal business model innovation in the Base of the Pyramid: The case of Philips Community Life Centres in Africa

This paper by Dr Elsie K. Onsongo, Prof. dr. Peter Knorringa and Prof. dr. Cees van Beers investigates how a multinational enterprise (MNE) engages in frugal business model innovation to find the optimal balance between value creation and value capture in resource-constrained contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Electric cooking in Tanzania: an actor-network map and analysis of a nascent sociotechnical innovation system

This paper provides a first attempt to map several characteristics of Tanzania’s e-cooking socio-technical innovation system. The ‘map’ consists of visualisations of the actor-networks and actor-relations in the system along with elaborations on who the actors are, the extent and nature of their interactions, sketches of significant projects, and discussion of emerging issues relevant to the further development of the innovation system.

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Of Monopolies and Mini-Grids: Case Studies from Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Senegal

This paper discusses in relation to four countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Senegal, in recent years new private sector actors in renewable energy mini grids have started to emerge, marking a shift away from large-scale diesel or hydro mini grids run by government utilities, and small-scale mini grid development previously led by bi-lateral donors and community organisations on a project-by-project basis.

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Comparing frugality and inclusion in innovation for development: logic, process and outcome

his paper sheds light on two main concepts applied to innovation for development: frugal innovation and inclusive innovation. Researchers often conflate these concepts when classifying or characterizing innovative endeavours in developing contexts. We argue, however, that these concepts are fundamentally different based on their philosophical orientations or logics, i.e. frugality versus social inclusion, their respective innovation processes and outcomes.

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Electric cooking in Kenya: an actor-network map and analysis of a nascent socio-technical innovation system

This paper provides a first attempt to map several characteristics of Kenya’s e-cooking socio-technical innovation system. The ‘map’ consists of visualisations of the actor-networks and actor-relations in the system along with elaborations on who the actors are, the extent and nature of their interactions, sketches of significant projects, and discussion of emerging issues relevant to the further development of the innovation system.

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Transforming Access to Clean Energy Technologies in the Global South: Learning from Lighting Africa in Kenya

The paper makes four contributions. First, it tests the extent to which the STIS-building concept is useful in understanding and conceptualising how Lighting Africa transformed the market for solar lanterns in Kenya from an estimated market size of 29,000 lamps in 2009 to one where 680,000 Lighting Africa certified lamps were sold in Kenya by the end of the Programme in 2013. Second, it presents the most in-depth analysis of Lighting Africa that we are aware of to date.

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Electric cooking in Rwanda: an actor-network map and analysis of a nascent socio-technical innovation system

This paper provides a first attempt to map several characteristics of Rwanda’s e-cooking STIS. The ‘map’ consists of visualisations of the actor-networks and actor-relations in the system along with elaborations on who the actors are, the extent and nature of their interactions, sketches of significant projects, and discussion of emerging issues relevant to the further development of the innovation system. It also includes some summary attention to the context and enabling environment of the e-cooking STIS.

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Are Minigrids Socially Inclusive? A Literature Review

This study explores the potential of mini grids as tools for inclusive innovation to address energy poverty in the Global South. We adopt the concept of inclusive innovation— which emphasizes the use of innovation to mitigate social exclusion and improve the well-being of marginalized populations—to systematically assess the literature on minigrids in the Global South. We explore the extent of inclusiveness in the aspiration, design, procurement, deployment and impact of mini-grids

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Mini-Grid Sustainability Framework and Its Application to Selected Mini-Grids in Kenya

This paper presents an indicator-based framework for the sustainability analysis of mini-grids and applies this to a selection of mini-grids in Kenya. Although various frameworks exist, they have been criticised for lack of attention to long-term perspectives, high data needs, prescriptive nature of the attributes and limited user-friendliness. Considering that data availability is a major concern and that data available is qualitative in nature, this paper proposes a set of indicators and a scoring system that can be used with a broad qualitative understanding of the sustainability attributes of the mini-grids.

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Are mini grids a solution to energy poverty? A case of mini-grids in Kenya.

The aim of our study was to interrogate the sustainability of mini grids in Kenya with a focus on their economic sustainability. We collect data using semi-structured interviews with households in 15 mini-grids across different geographical contexts in Kenya. We analyse energy use both for household and productive users, willingness to connect and willingness to pay for electricity, payment platforms and ease of access and use of these platforms, affordability, cost of electricity including that of connection, and interrogate the reliability of the electricity.

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Community vitality and frugal practices in informal settlements in Nairobi: Towards a typology

While community vitality is of increasing importance, it remains understudied. This study by Jan Fransen, Beatrice Hati, Rosebella Nyumba, Erwin van Tuijl explores community vitality in informal settlements by turning to the concept of frugal practices, defined as activities to develop and implement low-cost robust solutions that address communities’ needs within resource-constrained contexts. Based on literature and case study analysis in Nairobi, they define community vitality as dynamic relationships between residents and other local actors to cope with uncertainty and to meet community goals.

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