8. Batteries
Electrochemical essentials
Batteries are an everyday household staple in northern Kenya and northern Burkina Faso. These electrochemical essentials are as common as fruit or vegetables in the basket of consumer goods that partly defines people’s lives at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Batteries can be found for sale alongside charcoal, earphones, cotton thread and costume jewellery, as well as soaps, deodorant, tea, sweets and cooking utensils.
Estimates from surveys conducted by the MEI suggests that households in Goudoubo and Kakuma refugee camps can spend a substantial proportion of their meagre wages on simple alkaline batteries for torches.46 But what happens to these batteries after people have bought them? And what about the larger lead-acid batteries used to power devices and systems in a household? How are batteries used? How do batteries circulate around a camp in non-market exchanges between households and individuals? And what happens to old batteries as they enter electronic waste streams or are disposed of?
Despite the ubiquitous presence of batteries in people’s everyday lives they remain literally ‘black boxed’. They are physically sealed, coated in layers of plastic and metal that prevent people from interacting with the chemicals inside. They are also frequently concealed, hidden inside devices or technologies, in ways that sometimes make them difficult or impossible to remove and replace. As a result, even as batteries have become a commonplace and taken-for-granted part of refugee economies, they have also been largely invisible and forgotten.
This chapter puts batteries centre stage in the humanitarian energy landscape. It follows them across contexts of exchange as people purchase, barter and share them. The focus is on batteries in spaces of use – as people charge, discharge and recharge them in order to power mobile phones, lights, radios and televisions – and at the end of life – as batteries enter recycling and upcycling. Batteries can shed considerable light on the forms of economic inequality between refugees and on economies of repair and maintenance.
Battery consumption
A variety of battery types and brands can be found in circulation and use across Goudoubo and Kakuma. Most commonplace are the primary, single-use or disposable, batteries that can no longer generate power once they are discharged. In both camps brand-name AA-sized dry-cell alkaline or zinc carbon batteries are used to power portable torches and radios.
Equally widely used but more expensive are secondary batteries that can be recharged with a diesel generator or a solar panel. These include the lead-acid or gel batteries that are found in vehicles (cars, trucks, motorbikes), solar home systems and some models of portable solar lighting, as well as the lithium ion or lithium ferro phosphate batteries used in mobile phones and in some models of portable solar-powered lighting and charging kit. The ubiquity of these batteries in both camps is testament to their significance across sub-Saharan Africa. Trade in batteries is a crucial part of local economies, connecting host communities to refugees.
The electronic and electrical equipment stalls around Dori, a key transport route into Goudoubo, for example, are stocked with batteries, alongside DVDs and CDs, solar panels and solar lamps, radios, amplifiers, wires, earphones, mobile-phone chargers, fans and voltage regulators. Meanwhile, in one market place in Kakuma shops sell small disposable dry-cell batteries alongside kettles, water bottles and flasks, hand-powered meat grinders, blenders, extension cables, pots and pans, pestle and mortars (hand-powered), spaghetti, flour and oil.
In one shop, a shopkeeper showed where he kept wholesale packets of AA-sized batteries, below the shelves of battery-powered torches. The batteries were stocked next to the 10 kg, 20 kg and 40 kg bags of maize, stacked waist-high. ‘The bigger the bag of maize, the bigger the family’, he explained. His comment had a double meaning. Since bigger bags of maize are not just purchased by bigger families but also by richer families. Here the quality of people’s diet reflected disparities in social and economic status. Simply put, wealthier refugees can afford to eat more.
Bigger bags of maize are not just purchased by bigger families but also by richer families. The quality of people’s diet reflected disparities in social and economic status. Simply put, wealthier refugees can afford to eat more.
Just like diet, access to electrochemical energy in Goudoubo and Kakuma demonstrates differences in wealth and status among residents.47 Wealthier families are able to invest in bigger batteries. In both camps, access to energy storage is a prominent means through which people demonstrate household wealth and status. Higher-status households in Goudoubo, (those of block chiefs, refugee elders or refugee representatives), for example, proudly present the large lead-acid batteries that they bought for household use, charged via solar panels. For many the battery was one of few items brought with them when they fled Mali to Burkina Faso. These households are likely to have electrical goods that would run off the battery (e.g. TV, radios etc.) but also own larger-voltage solar panels they most likely purchased.
Similarly in Kakuma, disparities in disposable income between families are most obvious in differential access to electrical power. As shown in Chapter 7, the electrical transmission lines and cables that crisscross Kakuma show differential patterns of access to diesel-powered micro-grids. These systems allow relatively wealthy refugees to run televisions, radios, fridge freezers and electric lights. Off-grid systems offer a similar marker of socio-economic difference, with the wealthiest families able to afford bigger systems and, sometimes, multiple lead-acid batteries.
In Kakuma disparities in the relative wealth of refugees are often related to personal histories of displacement as well as to local employment opportunities. Refugee families that settled in the camp in the 1990s, for example, are more likely to have members now living in North America, from whom they may receive remittances. Meanwhile, refugees employed by a humanitarian agency or NGO are eligible to be paid a fixed stipend, offering some guarantee of a regular income. The presence of an off-grid solar home system that provides electricity to a household is one of the most highly visible reminders of such differentials in income. But the unequal distribution of energy systems and the differences in energy consumption are also reflected in the varying ability of refugees to enter the informal economy as micro-entrepreneurs. One of the most popular income-generating opportunities available to people in Kakuma is provided by the operation of a simple charging station for batteries and battery-powered devices.
The electric tap
In Goudoubo and Kakuma enterprising refugees have established solar-powered mobile charging stations. One or two solar panels charge a lead-acid battery, which is then used to charge batteries inside mobile phones. Charging stations are often analysed in terms of income generation and celebrated as creating opportunities for micro-enterprise within camp economies. In this sense, they can appear as a novel introduction to the energy landscape. But another way to understand the place of these charging stations or charging businesses in the landscape is to emphasize their continuity with other kinds of infrastructures, institutions and sites of exchange.
In many respects, for example, the place of the battery-charging station in the daily routines and flows of camp life mirrors the place of the water pipe or tap. As seen in Chapter 2, the daily collection of water is a social and gendered activity. Women and children gather at taps each day to collect water and transport it to the point of consumption. At home, demand for water of a particular temperature has given rise to considerable innovation in water-storage technologies.
Similarly, each day people gather at or around sites of charging to replenish portable batteries. Battery charging is an equally gendered activity, one more associated with the work of men rather than of women. Batteries are carried to the charging station inside the electrical devices they power (like phones) and sometimes carried on their own, independent of any electrical equipment. They are then transported to other sites.
Water from a tap has volume and mass, and these qualities shape the forms of labour and the kind of technologies that are required for its transportation and storage. A standard issue 10-litre water carrier is light when empty but heavy when full. The water carrier can be adapted for use, covered and coated in ways that keep water cool. Unlike water, electricity has neither volume nor mass and a battery has a fixed size and shape regardless of how fully it is charged. This size and shape determines how batteries can be moved and used.
Just as people adapt vessels for transporting and storing water, people also adapt batteries for use. For example, some connect multiple batteries in series to power more energy-demanding appliances. Others swap batteries between appliances, using mobile phone batteries in solar-powered lamps, for example. In appliances that require multiple batteries people combine cells of different ages and brands, trying to find ways of maximizing a charge. People introduce novel ideas about storage, sometimes keeping batteries in special places in an effort to retain or extend their charge. They seek out novel ways of connecting their appliances to batteries, when wires have come loose. Each of these examples presents opportunities for examining people’s situated ideas about electrical energy and for examining local systems of innovation.
Today, the infrastructure for refilling water carriers is deemed essential to the daily operation of Kakuma and Goudoubo. The installation of taps and pipes is often a humanitarian priority. By contrast the infrastructure for recharging batteries remains largely private, creating new opportunities not only for micro-enterprise but also for individual gain. Privately operated solar-powered charging stations are a common feature of both camps. Each operator’s combination of panel and battery offers a telling indication of socio-economic status. Wealthier operators have the capacity to invest in larger panels and multiple batteries. Poorer operators have smaller, simpler systems, sometimes constructed from second-hand components.
In Kakuma 1, the research team visited Hubert, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who used to be employed by one of the camp’s humanitarian agencies. When he left this post he combined his savings with remittances from a brother who remained in the DRC to purchase a solar home system and install it on the roof of his home. He used the system to power a domestic lighting system and sold the surplus stored in a lead-acid battery through a charging business run out of his home. As Hubert said, ‘I can charge anything for 10 bob (KES 10 or approximately $0.1). Some people come with their solar lights, some with their mobile phones, some with their lead batteries, I can charge anything’.
By contrast, in Goudoubo those able to operate comparable charging services are more likely to be members of the local, Burkinabe community. A market space just outside the camp has emerged as an important space for mobile charging service providers. Take Karim, a middle-aged man from the village of Yalgo, which is 50 km away. Every three days he travels to this market space where he operates a small stall charging mobile phones and selling rope used to harness livestock. He travels to the camp carrying a stock of rope and 50-watt solar panels that he erects behind the stall. The panels are connected to a lead-acid motorbike battery that he acquired second-hand; a system that cost him CFA 50,000 ($94) in Dori. The battery is connected, via an AC/DC invertor to a series of electrical sockets mounted on a plywood panel. Karim’s customers can plug their mobile phones and batteries directly into the socket. His business is so popular that he has devised his own system of organization, carefully taping and labelling each battery on the panel to avoid confusion between customers. He will fully charge a mobile phone for CFA 100 ($0.18) each, the equivalent of a cup of rice.
The battery fix
Battery-powered technologies, systems and devices are increasingly vital to the provision of basic services in contexts of humanitarianism and forced displacement. But batteries are also the weak spot in these systems. For example, they are the most common source of failure in small-scale, solar-powered lighting systems.48
Everybody who has ever used a battery-powered device over time is a witness to changes in its charge cycling and lifespan, and the ubiquity of batteries as a technology in Goudoubo and Kakuma is reflected by the ubiquity of stories about their failure. Across both camps people describe acquiring battery-powered lighting and mobile devices that, they are told, will hold a charge for up to six hours, only to discover after repeated use that this quickly drops to two hours between charges.
As people seek to recoup their expenditure on batteries, both camps have seen the expansion of second-hand markets in batteries from used lithium ion batteries to lead-acid batteries repurposed from old motorbikes and trucks. The circulation of second-hand batteries connects refugees to host communities and humanitarian practitioners. In Goudoubo, for example, people living adjacent to the camp reported securing second-hand batteries directly from a refugee employed as a driver within the camp. There are no mechanisms to guarantee the quality of these second-hand batteries and their efficacy can vary greatly.
Demand for batteries has also seen the growth of secondary markets around repair and reuse. The proliferation of electrical repair services includes informal and ad hoc repair work as well as formalized services established by people who have attended training programmes run by humanitarian agencies.
In 2017, an NGO in Goudoubo was contracted to provide a basic micro-electronic training course for six young male refugees. The aim was to teach them how to repair solar-powered lamps, on the basis that this might become some kind of income-generating activity for them. The trainees were given a multi-meter, a device that measures electronic voltage, current and resistance as well as a screwdriver set. At the end the trainers announced the men were all now electricians. But behind the scenes the trainers had a dim view of what they could fix. ‘Most of these kinds of lamps cannot be repaired,’ one NGO respondent said. ‘When the batteries are broken you cannot do anything. Some of the motherboard components, electric circuits and electronic controllers are too complicated. How can you even weld there? I’m an engineer and I couldn’t fix this – how can the people we are training. And then it comes to the battery. How can you repair a phone battery? The only solution is to change it for another.’
The proliferation of electrical repair services includes informal and ad hoc repair work as well as formalized services established by people who have attended training programmes run by humanitarian agencies.
Most replacement mobile phone batteries entered Goudoubo via Dori, which in 2017 was flush with dedicated microelectronic traders. Many of the traders made regular trips to Ouagadougou by public transport. Markets like Sankaré Yaré or Zabré Darga in Ouagadougou are full of stalls with old or broken mobile phones that provide traders with a variety of second-hand parts, including batteries.
While lithium ion batteries are near impossible to repair, lead-acid batteries, particularly larger models like those extracted from cars and motorcycles, can be more easily reconditioned by adding distilled water or through a reconditioning processes using disulphates. Re-conditioning acid batteries takes some degree of specialist skill and creates new kinds of electrochemical risk.
Electrochemical risk
As a source of power in mobile phones and decentralized energy lighting systems, batteries are associated with increased access to energy services from artificial lighting to information and communication networks. But they can also be sources of potential hazard. Lead, for example, is a heavy toxic metal and is lethal for humans. Journalists reporting from the camps of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, for example, describe children opening up and playing with dry-cell batteries in the absence of other toys or entertainment.49
While the humanitarian energy community often presents off-grid energy storage as a solution to challenges of energy access in refugee camps,50 accelerating global demand for batteries also risks exacerbating some worrying patterns of environmental pollution at sites of mining and waste disposal.51 For example, the widespread practice of repurposing lead-acid batteries in Kakuma and Goudoubo raises important questions about disposal. What happens to the battery acid in old or abandoned equipment, in the old car batteries or solar batteries that circulate around refugee camps? What happens to the lead that leaches into the groundwater or contaminates food or hands? Can the relatively bounded nature of refugee camps be utilized to set up recycling systems? There is currently little attention to these questions. They proved beyond the scope of the research of this paper but they signal important directions for future enquiry. These broaden concern with the humanitarian provision of basic energy services in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond to questions about the human and environmental cost of energy technologies, systems and solutions.
46 Corbyn and Vianello (2018), Prices, Products, and Priorities.
47 For wider discussions on inequality between refugees, see Omata, N. (2017), The Myth of Self-reliance: Economic Lives Inside a Liberian Refugee Camp (Vol. 36), Berghahn Books.
48 Cross, J. and Murray, D. (2018), The Afterlives of Solar Power: Waste and Repair Off the Grid in Kenya, Energy Research and Social Science.
49 McGrath, M. and Korn, M. (2017), ‘Razors, syringes and batteries: The toys that Rohingya children play with’, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/International/photographer-captures-life-inside-refugee-camp-rohingya-children/story?id=51587804 (accessed 21 Aug. 2019).
50 Franceschi, J. et al. (2014), ‘Off-grid Solar PV Power for Humanitarian Action: From Emergency Communications to Refugee Camp Micro-grids’, Procedia Engineering, 78, pp. 229–235.
51 Scheele, F. (2016), ‘Cobalt blues: Environmental pollution and human rights violations in Katanga’s copper and cobalt mines’, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO), https://www.somo.nl/cobalt-blues/ (accessed 21 Aug. 2019).