Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Program on Food Security and the Environment Program on Food Security and the Environment Stanford University




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

Project
2007-present

Investigators
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 enviornmental 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.