Renewable Energy as Peace Infrastructure: How Decentralized Power Shapes Peacebuilding in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Africa

Across fragile and conflict-affected settings in Africa, renewable energy can do more than deliver electricity. It can also function as peace infrastructure.

A new paper from Hubert Kinkoh, Renewable Energy as Peace Infrastructure: How Decentralized Power Shapes Peacebuilding in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Africa, highlights how communities across Africa are already demonstrating the potential of decentralized renewable energy systems to support peacebuilding outcomes when designed with conflict sensitivity and governed with genuine community ownership.

Drawing on experiences from contexts affected by conflict and fragility, the paper finds that solar mini-grids, solar home systems, and micro-hydro projects can help strengthen resilience, reduce grievances, restore social contracts, disrupt war economies, and create new opportunities for livelihoods and economic activity.

Through six country and regional cases across Nigeria, the Sahel, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the paper introduces a framework for understanding how renewable energy and peacebuilding interact at the community level. Its central conclusion is that energy and peacebuilding are not parallel tracks. The same tools that help renewable energy projects succeed—conflict analysis, stakeholder engagement, community benefit structures, and grievance mechanisms—are also essential tools for building lasting peace.

For communities, practitioners, energy developers, researchers, investors, policymakers, and others working at the intersection of renewable energy, development, and peacebuilding, the paper offers practical insights into how renewable energy projects can deliver both energy access and peacebuilding outcomes.

Read the full paper.

TOP IMAGE: Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Courtesy of Sandra Mutuku)