Delivering on the Promise of Distributed Renewable Energy Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

The 2016 World Bank literature review of growth entrepreneurship [9] adopted Sander Wennekers and Roy Thurik’s definition of entrepreneurship in their 1999 paper as “the process of starting a business; using a manifest ability and willingness of individuals, on their own, in teams, within and outside existing organizations, to perceive and create new economic opportunities (new products, new production methods, new organizational schemes, and new product-market combinations) and to introduce their ideas in the market, in the face of uncertainty and other obstacles, by making decisions on location, form, and the use of resources and institutions.” In addition, “entrepreneur firms” are defined as enterprises “with less than 100 employees that are enterprises with less than 100 employees that are younger than 7 years old, and are new entrants to a particular market” by Praag and Versloot in a 2007 paper. This paper adopts these two definitions when referring to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs.

Other negative impacts of traditional cooking methods on health, environment, and livelihoods, with disproportionally impacts on girls and women are detailed by Global Alliances for Clean Cookstoves studies.

Six hundred ninety-two million people live on less than US$2.50/day, including 60% of them on less than US$1.25/day in SSA. Assuming an average of five people per household and an average monthly household expenditure of US$6 on energy, this represents an annual market of US$10 billion [21•].