7. Wires
Despite the refugee camp being filled with nearly 180,000 people, and growing fast due to the ongoing unrest in South Sudan, a birds-eye view of Kakuma at night would show the sprawling area plunged into relative darkness, save for small punctuations of light. On the ground, UNHCR and its partner agencies have access to an array of diesel generators that provide electricity. Providing fuel to power these generators is big business. In 2017, they were trucked into the camp and distributed by the NGO Action Africa Help International, which was contracted by UNHCR to look after the logistics of fuel transportation as well as to service vehicles and generators.
Unofficially, many households and shops secure access to diesel-generated electricity.
Unofficially, many households and shops also secure access to diesel-generated electricity. In the oldest area of the camp, known as Kakuma 1, for example, the market place is woven together by thick tangles of hundreds of cables and wires, live and disconnected, that hang in and between small storefronts. In some places, strips of plastic bags hold bundles of wires together. Similar wires hang haphazardly throughout the camp, connecting households.
These seemingly chaotic wires and cables are evidence of a complex and territorial system of energy ownership. They facilitate trade, providing electricity to power the light bulbs and fans that hang in the market shops, and welcoming clients to escape the dimness and heat as shopkeepers try to set themselves apart from the competition. Examining the cables and wires reveals a highly organized and complex supply network, managed by informal energy contractors and subcontractors operating within kinship and ethnic-community clusters.
Control, ownership and access
In Kenya and Burkina Faso, the World Bank estimates that over 40 per cent of those who live close to the national electricity grid do not have access to the power it provides.42 This holds true for the displaced people living in Kakuma and Goudoubo, where the proximity of high-voltage transmission lines offers a visible, daily reminder of their disconnection and exclusion from energy services.
On a clear day, the pylons of the national grid are visible from Goudoubo. Northern Burkina Faso’s electricity grid passes just short of the camp. Similarly, though Kenya Power claims to be in the process of powering Kakuma’s marketplaces, as evidenced by rows of pylons and cables laying on the ground waiting for installation, it is not known when this grid will be functioning. Although the infrastructure for the Kenya Power grid is present, the connections are not. Residents of Kakuma town, near the camp, had as of February 2018 received power from a Rural Electrification Agency-constructed, Kenya Power-operated diesel mini-grid, which is reducing local energy bills, although indications suggested the supply would be extremely limited.43
Grid-like experiences of electricity are available to some residents of Kakuma, however, courtesy of a small number of micro-grid operators, who run diesel generators to provide power.44 These micro-grids map closely onto the camp’s social organization, which is largely along the lines of national and ethnic identity. Kakuma’s Sudanese, Congolese, Somali and Ethiopian communities often live in spatially segregated areas, with further divisions by kinship, clan and language group. The networks of cables that connect generators to consumers map tightly onto these social networks; for example, the Somali mini-grid supplier largely serves members of the camp’s Somali diaspora. Localized tangles of wires indicate further layers of connectedness, with a single electricity connection shared between families and households. Such shared electricity connections are a common phenomenon in Kakuma, with people ‘tapping’ power lines and extending diesel micro-grids still further across kinship networks.
For many consumers, the promise of a future connection to the national power grid offers some relief from the activities of these operators, and electricity from Kenya Power is likely to be cheaper than that provided by any mini-grid operator. Little surprise, then, that the coming of grid connectivity represents a challenge to the micro-grid operators.
The cables owned by a micro-grid operator, a Somali man we will call Abdullahi, carry electricity to 150 storefronts and 75 households throughout the area. He is very well-known throughout Kakuma; though energy provision is territorial and often contentious, there is an informal association of these energy operators, of whom Abdullahi claims to be the spokesperson.
Abdullahi is the only private micro-grid operator in Kakuma 1, and with the help of his father, he operates six generators that he bought at a UNHCR auction. Energy providers like him have control over price, who is connected and for how long. One micro-grid operator, speaking paternally about his technology, explains that its frequent power cuts are because ‘a generator is like a human body, sometimes it needs to rest’. But these decisions can be shaped by many different imperatives, over which the grid operator asserts total control. Abdullahi tells us that he chooses to shut down power between 12:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. in the Somali marketplace because of the heat.
Micro-grid operators are often highly territorial, with each supplying a specific area of the camp and protecting their market with vigour. They constitute informal energy oligopolies: they can fix prices, they operate outside of the purview of the humanitarian apparatus, and they can occasionally call upon the police to protect their interests. As Abdullahai said, ‘if another guy connects anyone on my side I will call the police on them… they will close him down’.
By acting simultaneously as friends, patrons, bosses and beneficiaries, micro-grid operators like Abdullahi become energy brokers, mediating access to basic energy services. Abdullahi, for example, sold electricity to the Ethiopian market and had ties to local government officials, who (he claimed) had promised him an additional generator so that he might expand his business to the host population. Whether such individuals are able or willing to harness their social networks and their knowledge of the market to help bridge gaps in the delivery of basic energy services across Kakuma, however, is a different matter.
In search of a quick fix
Wires are not just a feature of connections to diesel generators; they are also a vital part of the operation of small-scale electrical devices from solar lanterns to mobile phones. These devices have become a regular feature of the standard non-food items that are distributed to refugees on arrival at a camp but they would be redundant without the wires that allow them to be charged.45
Electrical wires, cables and connectors have become an increasingly important part of the material culture of camps. As small solar-powered lighting devices, for example, have become more widely distributed, the copper threads (coated in plastic and capped with a small micro-electronic connector) that connect lamps to photovoltaic panels have become an essential part of the humanitarian energy infrastructure. Without these, people cannot connect electrical appliances to sources of power. Similarly, as mobile phones have become important for purposes beyond telecommunications – integrated into camp payment and identification systems, for example – their wires and cabling are becoming increasingly relevant features of the energy infrastructure.
The single most common request for electric repairs in Goudoubo and Kakuma involves broken wires or electrical connectors. The demand for these repairs has created economic opportunities for refugees and non-refugees. When Abdullahi’s generators or electrical wires break down, he hires a Kenyan man from Kitale, a city that is almost 10 hours away by bus, who visits the camp every two to three months. Abdi explained that he did not trust anybody locally. ‘They get paid per repair,’ he said, ‘so they’ll never fix something completely. They’ll just want to create more work for themselves.’
However, this negative attitude towards technical skill levels and ingenuity in the camp is not borne out in interviews. Take Iken, a Tuareg man in his thirties who has set up a repair shop in Goudoubo’s main market centre. In Mali he repaired radios and mobile phones. In the camp – without the benefits of any of the organized training and skill development programmes run by humanitarian agencies and NGOs – he extended his knowledge and range to include solar lamps and solar panels. ‘Before coming here, in Mali, I was already repairing radios and mobile phones. I taught myself’, he explained. ‘Here in the camp I taught myself how to repair solar lamps too. It is easy to learn how to do it when you have some knowledge in repairing radio and mobile phones’.
Iken supplies himself with spare parts, although his ability to do so is conditional upon the travel permit granted by the camp administration. Once every few months he applies for a travel permit from the Commission Nationale Pour les Réfugiés, a national government body, which requires everybody formally registered in the camp to obtain a permit in order to travel beyond a 30-kilometre radius. He then travels to Dori from where he takes a bus to Ouagadougou where he scours the markets of Sankaré Yaré or Zabré Darga, buying old and broken mobile phones that he can use for spare parts and batteries. He also stocks up on mobile cases, new batteries, phone speakers and headphones.
One of the most common problems are broken wires. Sometimes Iken is asked to make modifications, replacing or extending the original wire with a more multifunctional cable that can charge mobile phones. In such cases he uses a mobile-phone charger, with a plug on one end and multiple connectors on the other end. He cuts the plug away and ties the loose wire to a wire coming directly from the solar panel. With this modification, people use the solar panel to charge both their solar lamp and multiple types of mobile phone.
This repair economy operates entirely without the use of electricity. In Goudoubo market, repairs on micro-electronic components and printed circuit boards are carried out with screwdrivers and a homemade soldering iron. Iken has built bespoke soldering irons out of metal and wood, which he heats with a small charcoal stove before welding electronic components on the printed circuit or motherboard. Such livelihoods are precarious. In early 2017, for example, a fire in the market place destroyed all this equipment, alongside a stock of tools, spare parts and broken devices that Iken was repairing.
When people turn to these providers of micro-electronic repairs it is often because they have reached the limits of what they can accomplish without them. Many people attempt everyday fixes themselves, learning through trial and error, turning to friends and neighbours and passing on their acquired knowledge and skills to their children.
One of the translators in Goudoubo, Karim, had four solar-powered lamps in his home: a small one given to his family by the IKEA Foundation, one given to his daughter at school, one given to his wife, and a large model that he exchanged with another refugee for a tarpaulin. The latter, a highly prized possession, had been rendered useless by his children, but Karim found a work-around. ‘When I got the solar lamp,’ he said, ‘there were connectors at the end of the wire. My children cut them, though, so now, when I want to connect the lamp to the battery, I strip the end of the wire and I wind the wire around the battery terminals.’
Karim taught his eight-year-old and six-year-old daughters the fix. ‘I told them both, as you can see there are two wires, the red one and the yellow one. With the red one, you connect it to the red terminal of the battery and then you connect the yellow wire to the blue terminal before switching on the lamp. Now, even if their mother is absent they can do it themselves’. For Karim, applying this kind of technical know-how was simply an extension of his previous knowledge and skills. ‘I used to be a driver and have a driving licence,’ he said, ‘I used to have contacts with mechanics and electricians in a garage, and I learned a basic competence with electrical equipment from them’.
Refuge on a wire
Wires and cables are often a prominent and visible part of ‘camp life’. Any visitors to Goudoubo and Kakuma may quickly become aware of the array of wires that are in use around people’s homes, either as electrical connectors or repurposed as lines to keep clothes off the ground or to dry wet laundry. Yet the value and significance of these objects rarely if ever appears in published studies of energy in refugee camps. Following wires around a camp reveals everyday economic exchanges through which people secure access to goods and energy services, and the power of informal brokers who have emerged to fill energy gaps, as well as a culture of repair and maintenance. The way that people interact with wires reveals their relationship to energy systems and technology as a source of memory and identity, as well as an opportunity for skill and innovation.
42 Chuhan-Pole, P. et al. (2017), ‘Africa’s Pulse’, World Bank Group, April, Vol. 15.
43 The average peak load is just 140 kWp, so there is room (and likely a business case) for adding connections and building demand. See Patel, L. (2018), ‘Assessing Potential for Off Grid Power Interventions in Turkana County with a Focus on the Communities around Kakuma and Kalobeyei’, Smart Communities Coalition – MAKE Change Pilot, https://www.energy4impact.org/file/2087/download?token=BsWZzcRf (accessed 12 Jan. 2019).
44 There are an estimated 30 ‘jua-kali’– informal diesel mini-grid operators – across Kakuma according to Patel, L. (2018), ‘Assessing Potential for
Off Grid Power Interventions in Turkana County with a Focus on the Communities around Kakuma and Kalobeyei’, https://www.energy4impact.org/
file/2087/download?token=BsWZzcRf (accessed 12 Jan. 2019).
45 The Sphere Handbook, for example, recommends that solar chargers be included in a package of ‘household items’ for people on the move. Sphere (2018), The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, Geneva: Sphere Association, p. 99.