Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Center for International Security and Cooperation Stanford University




An Alternative Development Model: Assessing solar electrification for income generation in rural Benin

FSI Stanford, FSE Project (Completed)
Ongoing

Researchers
Rosamond L. Naylor - Stanford University
Marshall Burke - Stanford University
Jennifer Burney - Stanford University
Jeremy M. Weinstein - Stanford University
Edward Miguel - Dept of Economics, Berkeley

+WEB+ Project Website

This project involves an economic and environmental assessment of a novel NGO program which uses solar power to pump irrigation and drinking water in a set of rural villages in northern Benin. Building on a research design in which the villages receiving the technology are selected at random, the project will survey treatment and control villages to isolate the effects of rural solar electrification on incomes, health, and environmental well-being. More broadly, this study will help us understand the success of novel technological interventions such as solar electrification in improving rural livelihoods relative to other possible interventions, in the context of the poor, agriculturally dependent communities that define rural Africa.


Publications