Factors that influence the access and cost of various energy options in the informal settlements of Kisumu country, Kenya

Abstract

Accessibility to energy is one of the major economic drivers in every economy. Many households in informal settlements in Kisumu County rely on non-clean energy sources despite many efforts to promote modern fuel technologies. This research demonstrates choice of cooking and lighting fuel in the informal settlement of Kisumu county. The major choices considered are charcoal, firewood, liquefied petroleum gas, electricity, tin lamp and biogas. Using the data collected by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics for census 2019 we concentrate on Seme constituency with approximately 22506 households, the study identifies key driving forces for energy choices in the informal settlements in the county. The findings of the research study shows that home appliances, household size, gender of the household head, education of the household head, age of the household head and the years of working experience the household head has play key role in explaining why different households would settle for different cooking and lighting energy options. In addition, the results clearly show that it is not that the informal settlements of Kisumu county do not have knowledge about clean energy but some socio-economic factors deter them from depending on the clean energy sources for both cooking and lighting. Conclusions and recommendations were drawn from the results based on the objectives of the research. The findings shows that greater percentage of households in the informal settlements settle on non-clean energy options while cooking or lighting and major reason being the household head being aged, the household head being female and the household having many siblings. The years of working experience the household head has is actually found not to affect so much, the choice of the type of energy used.