The data presents community surveys from rural Uganda and Zambia. Using a novel community survey, we collected rural dwellers’ views on the state of and perceptions towards community engagement in rural electrification. The survey was designed to explore rural electrification preferences and challenges, as well as to identify opportunities to improve interaction of community members with private energy busi- nesses as well as public sector institutions. Questions included their current and desired degree of involvement and decision-making power in energy access programmes in their communities, how, through whom and via which means they wish to engage with energy access issues, how they access information about energy access programmes and options, and for which activities they require modern forms of energy. We furthermore recorded characteristics such as age, education level, in- come level, gender, connection to electricity, district and sub-national region for each respondent. The questionnaire also captured supporting information such as community priority needs and challenges, experiences and willingness to pay for electricity services.Achieving energy access for all is a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in itself, and directly facilitates the SDGs of sustainable industrialisation, sustainable cities and communities, and reducing inequality. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the most energy-deprived region in the world, arguably constitutes the greatest obstacle for realising these goals. An estimated 700 million people in SSA - the majority of them in rural areas -lack electricity access, a number that is only expected to rise as the continent's rural population growth outpaces capacity growth. The three SDG dimensions of achieving energy access - affordability, reliability and sustainability - each stand in stark contrast to the status quo: while the cost of electricity in SSA can be orders of magnitude higher than in industrialised countries, blackouts are frequent, and less than a quarter of energy supply comes from renewable sources. Energy poverty has impaired SSA's economic development since its independence in the 1960s, indicating that new approaches are urgently required. Given the extent of rural energy poverty, limited rural purchasing power and logistical difficulties, innovative, locally driven business models for the renewable energy sector are required to achieve comprehensive rural electrification in SSA. In particular, rapidly falling system costs have made renewable off-grid solutions the cheapest and cleanest option in many remote areas. However, three main issues have prevented sustainable electrification: difficulties in attracting international investment to small-scale renewables; inconsistent and often opaque regulatory and institutional frameworks; and a failure to include local communities, i.e. customers, in planning. Research to date is alarmingly scarce in all three of these areas in SSA. This interdisciplinary research therefore aims to design integrated, actionable and transferable development strategies for the local renewable energy sector capable of delivering comprehensive, sustainable rural electrification in SSA. Echoing the GCRF call's sentiment, we believe that the way to unlock this potential is via scaling up small to medium-sized innovative business models, institutional reforms and social inclusion strategies. The research pursues three mutually reinforcing areas of inquiry: suitable business models for a competitive local renewable electrification industry; optimal institutional arrangements to facilitate the development of the industry; and enabling community involvement, especially in rural areas. We deploy a comparative country case study approach, focusing on the contrasting situations of Uganda and Zambia, in order to increase the generalizability of our findings for other countries in SSA. The proposed project is deeply committed to deliver impact beyond academia. Identifying current barriers to scaling rural electrification and developing solutions to overcome them can only be successfully achieved through including local business, public sector and communal stakeholders. These stakeholder groups - including Uganda's and Zambia's regulatory and legislative bodies, local businesses, and civil society - will therefore be repeatedly engaged throughout and, where possible, beyond the project. We will use several channels to implement our results: practitioner reports targeted at African renewable energy SMEs and energy regulators; the development and implementation of innovative business models, including novel financing and revenue schemes developed with community input; a digital SME renewable energy network where different companies in SSA can directly engage with one another; workshops to convene all stakeholder groups; private one-to-one meetings with public sector representatives; and research seminars at local universities to train future decision-makers. Given our focus on a local, African-owned and -run industry, we also foresee further benefits for local employment and knowledge creation.

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