Tontine: Self-help financing for solar home systems

• We present rural electrification models.
• We present the issues of rural electrification financing.
• We study the case of Senegal.
• We present Tontine, a self-help financing system.
• We show the relevance of Tontine in rural electrification.

The main limitation for a consistent expansion of rural electrification in developing countries is financial. In this paper we propose a new method of financing to access solar home systems for poor rural areas of developing countries. We use the concept of Tontine that is a traditional self-help organization that can provide funds without guarantees or interest, to give access to electricity to those who could not otherwise. We have developed low cost solar home systems presented in this paper to embody our proposition. We have as well started a pilot project in Senegal. We present two basic forms of self-help associations that have saving and lending as a primary or sole function, Rotating and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations, respectively under ROSCA and ASCRA acronyms. We have built and proposed two solar home systems in ROSCA scheme in this paper. System 1 features two 5 W LED lamps and a mobile phone charger. System 2 is smaller, it is based on recycled mobile phone batteries, it powers a 5 W LED lamp. In the pilot project, the tontine for system 1 is taken on one year period while system 2 is given on 5 months basis.