Energy Transition and Gender Issues in Southwestern Ethiopia: Focusing on Electrification and Firewood Usage

As climate change issues become more serious in sub-Saharan Africa, development assistance have been promoted, and projects to install electricity infrastructure based on renewable energy sources are rapidly developing. In Ethiopia, the site of this study, the installation of electrical infrastructure has also progressed, and electricity from renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric and geothermal power generation has reached almost 100%. This has led to on-grid electrification not only in urban areas, but also in agro-pastoral societies. However, the benefits of this development are not necessarily being enjoyed by all local residents. In particular, only about 40% of agro-pastoral communities have access to electricity, and there has been little conversion from wood and charcoal, the most common energy source used at the household level, to electricity and gas. The large amount of smoke generated by wood and charcoal combustion causes “domestic air pollution”, which causes respiratory diseases in women and children. The purpose of this study is to analyze the access to electricity and the conventional use of wood and charcoal in an agro-pastoral community in southwest Ethiopia, and to identify the factors that hinder the conversion to clean energy from the actual living conditions of the local people. Through this analysis, I aim to advance the discussion on energy transition and energy mix in sub-Saharan Africa. The study found that woodchips remain an essential energy source for ‘poor’ producers and users, and that barriers to energy conversion are not simply economic, but a complex combination of factors including trust in government, cooking habits, and food culture. Although households are promoting the use of improved stoves and cooking methods to conserve firewood, it was also found that the negative impacts of firewood use on women's health, etc. remain unresolved due to gender issues within households.