Over one bil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly are now esti­mat­ed to live in slums or infor­mal set­tle­ments.¹ This pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing as con­flicts, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and cli­mate change fuel fur­ther dis­place­ment from rur­al areas. In sub-Saha­ran Africa, some­where from 50–60% of the urban pop­u­la­tion of 200 mil­lion lives in infor­mal com­mu­ni­ties that face struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers to secur­ing legal access to the elec­tric­i­ty grid.

For res­i­dents of infor­mal com­mu­ni­ties who can­not afford the con­nec­tion fee or pro­vide required ten­an­cy doc­u­ments (among oth­er bar­ri­ers), the only viable alter­na­tive is to con­nect infor­mal­ly through a local elec­tri­cian. Though an infor­mal con­nec­tion pro­vides a mar­gin­al lev­el of access to the grid, it engen­ders new vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Elec­tri­cians and land­lords, act­ing as de fac­to elec­tric­i­ty retail­ers, can set their tar­iffs, phys­i­cal­ly restrict the time of day dur­ing which pow­er is avail­able, or lim­it the num­ber and type of appli­ances used. Peri­od­ic enforce­ment raids from local author­i­ties can mean hefty fines or jail time for those found with ille­gal connections.

Despite the enor­mous scale of un and under-served infor­mal urban com­mu­ni­ties world­wide – and accel­er­at­ing urban­iza­tion rates – their access chal­lenges have remained out­side the main­stream view of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal 7 com­mu­ni­ty work­ing to “ensure access to afford­able, reli­able, sus­tain­able and mod­ern ener­gy for all.” A poor under­stand­ing of how peo­ple con­nect to the grid and the lim­i­ta­tions and dri­vers involved in their deci­sion-mak­ing hin­ders efforts to improve access. The fol­low­ing insights are based on pre­lim­i­nary work by Spot­light Kam­pala – a research ini­tia­tive aim­ing to offer action­able insight into access chal­lenges in infor­mal com­mu­ni­ties in Kampala.