Distributed Ledgers and Decentralised Energy in Sub Saharan Africa

全球移动电话行业已成为联合国在撒哈拉以南非洲实现人人享有可持续能源目标的重要合作伙伴。在代表全球移动运营商利益的gsm协会的推动下，为该地区的移动增强型能源服务提供支持。GSMA已将分布式账本技术确定为一个关键的感兴趣领域，它有可能改变撒哈拉以南非洲地区分散或离网能源服务的现有商业模式，并加速获得可持续能源服务。为此，GSMA的移动促进发展公用事业部门目前正在努力更好地了解和评估分布式账本对能源服务公司和客户的潜在影响、应用、用例、收益和成本，目标是利用其与英国国际发展部的战略合作伙伴关系，为未来的试验提供资源，并促进私营部门的投资。这项为期24个月的研究项目与GSMA的“移动促进发展公用事业”（Mobile for Development Utilities）计划和SolarCoin区块链的开发商ElectriCChain合作，汇集了一个由电气和电子工程师、人机交互专家、和社会人类学家探索分布式账本技术的潜力，通过将当前的商业模式与现有的移动支付基础设施和第三方分离，创造新的模式来激励和奖励离网太阳能的安装，并开发新的点对点商业模式，加速撒哈拉以南非洲地区离网太阳能的获取。

The global mobile phone industry has emerged as an important partner in achieving the UN's goals of sustainable energy access for all in Sub Saharan Africa. Support for mobile enhanced energy services in the region driven by the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA), which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. The GSMA has identified distributed ledger technologies as a key area of interest with the potential to transform existing business models for decentralised or off grid energy services in sub Saharan Africa and accelerate access to sustainable energy services. To this end GSMA's Mobile for Development Utilities division is currently seeking to better understand and evaluate the potential impact, applications, use cases, benefits and costs of distributed ledgers for energy service companies and customers, with the goal of leveraging its strategic partnership with the Department for International Development to resource future trials and to catalyse private sector investment. Working in partnership with the GSMA's Mobile for Development Utilities programme and ElectriCChain, developers of the SolarCoin Blockchain, this 24 month research project brings together a team of electrical and electronic engineers, human-computer interaction specialists, and social anthropologists to explore the potential for distributed ledger technologies to accelerate access to off grid solar energy in Sub-Saharan Africa by delinking current business models from existing mobile money payment infrastructures and third parties, creating new models for incentivising and rewarding the installation of off grid solar, and developing new peer-to-peer business models.