**5. Discussion**

It has been demonstrated that rural electrification is a key enabler, facilitator, and driver for sustainable development of rural areas of the developing world. It is also acknowledged that the most important economic sector for these areas is agriculture because, as a first step, they can provide the food needed by the local population and, as a next step, can stimulate economic activity and development. Rural electrification is challenging, and it is di fficult to have viable profitable investments.

It is widely acknowledged at this point in time that private investment is needed in order to provide electricity to people living in rural areas of the developing world [53]. Development partners like the World Bank [54], the European Union (EU) [55] and the USA [56] are providing financing schemes to innovative business models related to rural electrification. Moreover, support for developing new policy models has also been heavily supported. The EU, through its Technical Assistance Facility for Sustainable Energy, has developed the "Guidelines for Institutional and Policy Model for Micro-/Mini-grids" for the benefit of the African Union Commission [57], which includes provisions that facilitate innovative business models for rural electrification, including the model proposed in this paper. Furthermore, community based models have also been investigated because they can increase community engagement, address some of the challenges faced by other business models, and be able to o ffer more socio-economic benefits to the local community [58]. Technological advancements can indeed decrease overall costs, contributing to the viability of rural electrification investments. This has been acknowledged, and upcoming innovative financing schemes like the Digital Energy Facility by Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the EU have this at their core [59]. The most advanced business models in rural electrification, such as the JUMEME example

that was presented in the introduction, have rural electrification companies at their center and are trying to develop the electricity needs of the local population in order to be able to sell more electricity and ultimately ensure the viability of the electrification investment.

Going beyond the state-of-the-art and building upon the lessons learned, the case study of this work shows that there is another way possible, which can address some of the challenges faced and eventually ensure that two targets are met at the same time; stimulation of economic activity through the electrification of productive loads mainly related to agriculture on one hand, and provision of household electrification utilizing agricultural cooperatives as the project owner on the other. The definition of a cooperative according to the International Cooperative alliance is "Cooperatives are people-centred enterprises owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realise their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations" [60]. While cooperatives were initially introduced in Africa as part of colonial economic policies, since the 1980s, structural changes and legal battles have taken place in order to minimize governmen<sup>t</sup> interference towards independence and further growth [61]. Significant promotion of agricultural cooperative producer structures has been observed and is considered as an important way forward [62]. Agricultural cooperatives can indeed be one of the vehicles for promoting sustainable rural development.

As was showcased in Section 3, if an autonomous electricity system based on photovoltaics is sized to meet the needs of a commercial load, such as milling, large amounts of energy are wasted. This is due to the fact that production of electricity is much cheaper than storing it and it makes economic sense to have increased installed power to meet the load during, for example, cloudy days than to store electricity produced during sunny days. As presented in Figure 8, almost half of the produced electricity is discarded because it does not make economic sense to store it. This discarded electricity can be used to provide Tier 2 household electrification to the villagers. The actual cost for supplying this electricity to households is linked to the microgrid infrastructure. It is also understandable that almost all of the households will be members of the agricultural cooperative of the village. They can decide to use part of the agricultural profits for cross-subsidization of their households' electrification. This is fully in line with the spirit of cooperatives, citing from [60] "Putting fairness, equality and social justice at the heart of the enterprise, cooperatives around the world are allowing people to work together to create sustainable enterprises that generate long-term jobs and prosperity. Cooperatives allow people to take control of their economic future and, because they are not owned by shareholders, the economic and social benefits of their activity stay in the communities where they are established."

It has to be noted at this point that the selected case study applies to Rwanda, but comparable results are expected to be obtained in all East African countries in terms of decentralized maize flour production because the maize markets in these countries have many similarities [41]. Agriculture related productive loads applicable to remote areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, though, are not limited to on-site flour production. Pumping water for irrigation has been proven to be one of the best interventions for increased production and consequent farmers' income increase [63]. Small scale palm oil processing has proven to be profitable [64]. Ice makers can allow communities near the sea or a lake to store fish for longer periods of time; this in turn leads to increased fish sales and, consequently, increased income for these communities [65]. Rice threshers can also be powered by o ff-grid systems to provide benefits to remote farms [66]. The list of agriculture related productive loads that can be powered by rural electrification system is extensive [33]. This means that the proposed business model can be applied anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa where an agricultural cooperative is active and profitable post-harvest processing of the agriculture produce is possible.

The proposed business model has further benefits because rural electrification provision companies can o ffer their services as subcontractors and not have to undertake a much more extended role, as in the JUMEME example presented above, by utilizing available resources more e ffectively. Moreover, since agricultural electrification investments have really low payback periods (in the above case study, it was less than two years) it can be relatively easy for the cooperatives to ge<sup>t</sup> access to development financing and treat the household electrification component as a side-product for the benefit of their community on the path to achieving sustainable development.
