Iridescent Ambitions: How Alianza Shire Lights Up with Refugee Communities Through Solar Solutions

Conflicts, drought, and social unrest have become an all-too-common occurrence across East Africa in the past two decades. Against this backdrop, more than a million refugees and asylum seekers have made Ethiopia their tentative home as they flee persecution back home in recent years. However, the country which hosts close to 4.5 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) according to the United Nations, has severely limited resources to avail. Support from humanitarian and development partners remains crucial to sustaining relatively decent living conditions for citizens and refugees.

Recognizing the dire needs, a multi-stakeholder partnership financed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), and comprising three leading Spanish energy companies (acciona.org, Iberdrola, and Signify), the Centre for Innovation in Technology for Human Development of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (itdUPM), and in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), landed in Ethiopia on 2014 with the mission to provide energy access across humanitarian settings.

Their first pilot experience was in the Adi-Harush camp (Shire, Tigray), hosting around 8,000 Eritrean refugees, of which many were unaccompanied minors. The pilot enabled the installation of 63 LED luminaries covering a distance of 4 kilometers, the improvement, and extension of the camp’s electricity network, as well as the communal services connection to the grid, including the primary school, two communal kitchens, and the markets that hosted 36 small enterprises.

While the pilot initiative received support from the European Union’s Trust Fund for the Horn of Africa for further scaling of its impacts, the breakout of conflict across Tigray in November 2020, together with the COVID-19 pandemic presented formidable challenges, leading to its eventual suspension, and relocation. Nevertheless, the Adi-Harush pilot provided crucial insights for similar initiatives by the Alianza Shire team.

Luminary Horizons in Southeastern Ethiopia.

Close to the border between Kenya and Somalia, a chain of five refugee camps resides in the Dolo Ado and Bokolmanyo Woredas of the Somali Regional State: Melkadida, Kobe, Bokolmayo, Hilaweyn and Buramino. Around 220,000 refugees, as of October 2024, are registered in this network of camps. However, with only 21% of the mostly Somalian refugees generating income, and the host community faring only slightly better, resource shortages have long plagued the 14-year-old camps. The area, which before the 2009 influx of refugees had a population of around 120,000, largely relies on external aid for coverage of its daily needs. Geographical isolation, an arid climate and population pressures have partly contributed to its impoverishment.

Following the suspension of its operations in Tigray, and bolstered by new technologies and insights, Alianza Shire relocated to the Hilaweyn and Kobe refugee camps with the goal of implementing renewable energy solutions for both communal services and households. With access to energy remaining at a dismal 5% across the targeted population, the project relied on incorporating private sector and public institutions into a collabo­rative framework to respond to the energy necessities in the area.

Co-designed and co-created alongside the local stakeholders and communities so they could become producers and consu­mers at the same time, Alianza Shire has provided sustainable energy solu­tions to respond to two different necessities:

On one side, the need for secure energy from renewable sources for street lighting and communal services. 207 all-in-one solar powered streetlight luminaries were installed in Kobe Refugee Camp, together with a 125WP photovoltaic mini-grid powering communal services for both refugees and host communities. On the other side, the need for energy access at household level. Considering the lack of access to this service when houses are far from electricity connection points, a market-based delivery model was deployed in Hilaweyn Refugee Camp, providing electricity through Solar Home Systems (SHS). This model has fostered the local market and entre­preneurship, enhancing the creation of livelihoods within the communities.

Promising Prospects

Early results from the Kobe Refugee Camp signal immense benefits to the community located nearly 250 Km away from the national grid. The streetlighting component has increased the illuminated camp surface from a mere 5.6% to 46%, with the protection and livelihood generation impacts that this entails for the 31.150 members of Kobe refugee and host communities. Additionally, special focus was given to high-risk areas identified by the community, which have gone from 9.48% of illuminated surface to 33.39% The mini-grid is supplying power to over 16 communal services, including the capacity to support the school feeding program in five primary schools through a soon to be implemented e-cooking pilot project. Community engagement also proved consequential as the installation was carried out by the Kobe Energy Cooperative after training and guidelines

In Hilaweyn, more than 1700 SHS have been installed with a satisfaction rate of more than 90%, effectively improving the quality of life of more than 12500 people from both refugee and host communities. The market-based delivery model has also reinforced the livelihood generation opportunities in the area, as the project has profoundly contributed to the strengthening of the local energy cooperative.

As one engineer closely aligned with the Project remarked, Alianza Shire is sound proof that working ‘with’ the communities proves to be more luminescent than just working ‘for’ the communities. Multi-stakeholder partnerships can bring private and public actors together for much-needed spark to the millions toiling in the dark.

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Source: This story is authored by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).