Listening Initiative Aimed at Uncovering Vulnerabilities for Off-Grid Customers

Their voices are often unheard in the global conversation, and their pandemic challenges underrecognized, so as part of a listening initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation and its partners are surveying rural electrical customers in six countries to identify vulnerabilities and make sure energy poverty does not spread or worsen during the Covid-19 crisis.

The survey, begun in May and extending for five months, will tally the responses of about 90,000 customers, most of them off-grid, in India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Uganda. The initiative is part of a partnership between the Foundation and 60 Decibels, a social impact measurement company spun out of the nonprofit impact investment fund Acumen.

With dual health and economic challenges triggered by the Covid-19 crisis, the survey has two primarily purposes. First, it will provide insights into where economic hardship may be most acute, seriously threatening customers’ ability to pay for essential goods and services, including electricity. This can help energy companies, national governments and policymakers, and global energy access funders target their responses.

“The initiative is an eye opener in terms of understanding the on-the-ground situation and the needs, expectations and challenges of the rural communities,” said Smart Power India’s CEO Jaideep Mukherji, whose beneficiaries are among those being polled. “The survey will help organizations like ours prepare precise and community-centric strategies in delivering our programs to the last mile.”

Secondly, the survey offers a chance to add seldom-heralded voices to the global pandemic discussion. “In a context where every news headline was about Covid-19 and its impact on people, a dearth of data on realities in rural communities, particularly in the global south, was troubling,” said Shawna Hoffman, the Foundation’s Director of Measurement and Program Performance. “When the story is completely focused on some parts of the globe and devoid of perspectives from other places, that’s an equity issue. We knew lots about how people in capital cities were faring, but very little, if anything, about what was happening in rural lower-income communities.”

“We weren’t hearing the voices of those likely to be most impacted,” agreed Kat Harrison, Director of Impact for 60 Decibels, which is carrying out the survey. “All of us are struggling; no one is having a good time. But if you are vulnerable to begin with, it is really worse.”