The uptake and diffusion of solar power in Africa: socio-cultural and political insights on a rapidly emerging socio-technical transition in developing countries

This special issue focuses on the rapid recent growth of solar PV across various geographies and scales in Africa. Herein we summarise the contributions of the component papers and position them within the context of the literature on sustainable energy access. We argue that there is an urgent need for greater attention to the neglected socio-cultural and political dimensions of sustainable energy access, dimensions that are vital to understand if ambitious global SDG commitments to achieving sustainable energy for all (ever, let alone by 2030) are to be achieved. This special issue includes papers on the: systemic and socio-technical nature of energy access transitions; politics and political economy of energy access; gendered dimensions of energy access; critical STS perspectives on the dominant, technologically determinist framing of energy access and implications for marginalising local actors, and; (for the first time in the energy access literature), application of social practice perspectives on energy access. The result is a diverse range of empirically grounded, theoretically and methodologically novel (in relation to the existing literature) approaches, providing important new insights into how to understand the neglected socio-cultural and political dimensions of sustainable energy access, whilst simultaneously increasing our understanding thereof.