Experimental Impact Study on a Micro-Grid Project in Rural Madagascar: The Café Lumière Project
May 14, 2025
Collecting data for standard impact evaluations is costly and complex. Yet measuring the impact of decentralised electricity, including mini-grids, is crucial to electrify 1 billion people by 2050 who currently lack grid connection alternatives.
In 2023, Jean-Claude Berthélemy (FERDI), Mathilde Maurel, and Vincent Nossek, developed a new impact evaluation method combining Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) approach with the use of Night-Time Lights (NTL) satellite data.
This approach, applied for the first time to mini-grids, was tested in 12 villages in Madagascar.
Long-term objective: strengthen monitoring and evaluation of mini-grid projects, and support investment planning for electrification programmes across Africa.
As part of the “Cafés Lumière” project led by Électriciens sans frontières in Madagascar, FERDI is evaluating mini-grid impacts in collaboration with private operator Anka Madagascar.
Initial findings, shared in a blog post on Entreprenante Afrique, showed positive impacts on household electricity use (lighting, mobile phone charging) and on maternal and child health. However, no significant effects were yet observed on education or security.
In partnership with Club-ER (the African network of rural electrification agencies) and Électriciens sans Frontières, FERDI is expanding its work on evaluating the impact of mini-grids — a promising solution for rural electrification in West Africa.
These evaluations are supported by the project “Growing Government Engagement in Energy Access”, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
↪ Two studies were published to refine the understanding of impacts revealed by night-time light data. The first, carried out for the first time on African projects (Madagascar and Burkina Faso), examined the dynamic nature of these impacts. The second, in partnership with Electriciens sans Frontières, quantified and adjusted for biases caused by public lighting.
↪ A broad data collection campaign is ongoing, combining satellite imagery and field surveys across hundreds of rural electrification projects in at least four African countries. This project aims to document the various impacts and identify the key risk factors which may cause project failure.
