News

An online exhibition looking at the people and projects bringing sustainable energy solutions to communities in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique features in Sheffield's Festival of Social Science from 23 October to 9 November 2025.

The online exhibition is linked to the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science theme for 2025 of ‘our working lives’ as the featured videos demonstrate how people in the global south are harnessing off grid electricity to support healthcare, business development and food production.

This short film provides an overview of training delivered by The Test and Training Center for Renewable Energy Technologies at Mzuzu University in Malawi for two cohorts of female engineers.

With women engineers or technicians in sub-Saharan Africa accounting for only 20% of trainees and Malawian women’s participation in the energy sector being very low despite women appearing to be the most significant energy users, it was decided to run a training course specifically targeted at women to try and combat this imbalance.

CESET Co-Investigator Joshua Kirshner and his colleague have published a new open access article entitled "Harnessing the sun – addressing sociotechnical barriers to off-grid solar power deployment in Mozambique" in Innovation and Development, 1–20. 

The research was done as part of a project funded by UK Aid - FCDO which overlapped with the early part of CESET. The paper draws on work done in CESET, including by Lorraine Howe and Carlos Shenga from CPGD on the new off-grid energy regulation. 

Congratulation to Harshit Vallecha, Mulualem Gebreslassie, Fana Filli, Christopher Hara, Chrispin Gogoda, Amare Assefa, Long Seng To, Joshua Kirshner and Vanesa Castán Broto on the publication of their new open access article published in Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability. 

The Tigray regional state of Ethiopia faces significant challenges regarding energy access. Before the conflict that began in late 2020, the energy access rate in Tigray was already low, with a considerable portion of the rural population relying on traditional energy sources like firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating.

CESET team member Amare Assefa from Addis Ababa University conducted a two-day practical and theoretical training on 16-17 September 2024 for Chipopoma small-scale hydropower plants technicians and local young community members aimed to equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary for the successful operation, and maintenance of chipopoma mini hydropower. 

The training objectives were: 

In October 2024 Adu presented on "​​GIS-based mini-grid wind energy geographical economic potential assessment: A case study of Ethiopia" at the conference at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, USA. Adu provides an overview on the presentation given in the blog below.

Ethiopia, with a population exceeding 126 million as of 2023, faces significant challenges and opportunities in the energy sector, particularly in expanding access to electricity. As of 2022, only 54.2% of the population had access to electricity, highlighting the need for innovative solutions to bridge this gap.

This webinar took place on 6th November 2024 convened by CESET team member Harshit Vallecha. This webinar explored the strategies to realize resilient community energy systems which can withstand unforeseen natural hazards, climate change induced risks and socio-political disruptions. Building resilient community energy systems is critical to ensure clean and reliable energy access to vulnerable communities residing in remote and risk prone regions, especially in developing countries of Global South.

Dr Aran Eales, Research Fellow in Electronic And Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde has been commissioned to produce a second report for CESET entitled "Global Perspectives on Community Energy for a Just Transition: The case for UK-Africa Community Energy Twinning".