Energisation of rural sub-Saharan Africa: grappling with poor sustainability

The bulk of rural Africa remains un-electrified and is underserved or poorly served by any other form of modern energy infrastructure. It is most often assumed that lack of finance and appropriate technology are the obvious causes. The common perception is that in the presence of modern technology the desired social change process automatically commences. To make matters even worse, typical post project reports from the Third World often contain commissions or omissions that essentially belie the grim reality on the ground. Problems in modern society are now largely tackled using a wide range of software applications. However even with all the well-tested skills in computer coding endless consumer complaints abound. "Usability engineering" is an example a state-of-the-art scientific tool that has been extensively used in recent times by the software design industry to tackle such problems as enhancement of the human/computer interface. This paper proposes that these modern scientific tools could be adopted to break the intangible technological barrier to African rural modernization