Bridging the urban energy divide: equity-focused transition pathways for sub-Saharan African cities
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis examines how alternative urban energy transition pathways in Sub-Saharan Africa could simultaneously address the imperatives of equitable energy access and use across different income groups, while meeting other development and sustainability goals. Through detailed analysis of six cities - ranging from metropolitan centres to smaller towns - the research provides new insights into the patterns and drivers of energy inequalities in African urban contexts. The study makes several contributions to knowledge. First, it presents the first comprehensive, multi-city analysis of urban energy consumption and emissions across key economic sectors in African cities. Key findings highlight that urban energy profiles in Sub-Saharan Africa exhibit far greater heterogeneity than often recognized. Results from the scenario analysis also showed that this heterogeneity results in varied equity outcomes even when the study cities were subjected to the same policy interventions, therefore demanding more context-specific approaches to urban energy policy design. The research also identifies electricity use as uniquely significant among energy carriers, showing both the strongest correlation with GDP and typically the most unevenly distributed across household quintiles. Second, the thesis makes relevant methodological contributions through the development and implementation of the Urban Household Energy Model (UHEM), a transparent bottom-up modelling framework custom-designed to analyse household energy inequalities in African urban contexts. Through extended application of the Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve to previously inaccessible municipal datasets, the research provides new evidence that household energy use inequalities consistently show significantly lower magnitudes than income inequalities, suggesting that energy's status as a fundamental need creates a "floor effect" in consumption patterns. This, however, does not extend to electricity use, which shows marked…
abstract: This thesis examines how alternative urban energy transition pathways in Sub-Saharan Africa could simultaneously address the imperatives of equitable energy access and use across different income groups, while meeting other development and sustainability goals. Through detailed analysis of six cities - ranging from metropolitan centres to smaller towns - the research provides new insights into the patterns and drivers of energy inequalities in African urban contexts. The study makes several contributions to knowledge. First, it presents the first comprehensive, multi-city analysis of urban energy consumption and emissions across key economic sectors in African cities. Key findings highlight that urban energy profiles in Sub-Saharan Africa exhibit far greater heterogeneity than often recognized. Results from the scenario analysis also showed that this heterogeneity results in varied equity outcomes even when the study cities were subjected to the same policy interventions, therefore demanding more context-specific approaches to urban energy policy design. The research also identifies electricity use as uniquely significant among energy carriers, showing both the strongest correlation with GDP and typically the most unevenly distributed across household quintiles. Second, the thesis makes relevant methodological contributions through the development and implementation of the Urban Household Energy Model (UHEM), a transparent bottom-up modelling framework custom-designed to analyse household energy inequalities in African urban contexts. Through extended application of the Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve to previously inaccessible municipal datasets, the research provides new evidence that household energy use inequalities consistently show significantly lower magnitudes than income inequalities, suggesting that energy's status as a fundamental need creates a "floor effect" in consumption patterns. This, however, does not extend to electricity use, which shows marked…
author: Yongoua Nana, Joel
language: en
keywords: Chemical Engineering
license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date published: 2025
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:13Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Chemical Engineering

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42468