Transport transitions and e-mobility adoption in sub-Saharan Africa

Transport-energy transitions pose complex challenges that have been extensively studied in high-income countries in response to national mandates for climate action. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as the majority of sub-Saharan African (SSA) states, however, have low but rapidly growing motorisation rates and face very different challenges in adopting new technologies to foster economic development and ensure equitable, clean access to transportation. Whilst targeted support for electric mobility (e-mobility) is widely regarded to be a key tenet in widening equitable access to transport without the associated carbon emissions and public health problems of petroleum-powered vehicles, this transition is highly context-specific as it depends on existing and evolving infrastructures, travel demands, governance and regulation systems, topography and natural resources.

This research will focus on the interplay of infrastructural limitations, socioeconomic factors, and policy frameworks, aiming to develop models to support decision-makers in proposing comprehensive strategies for accelerating the transition to sustainable e-mobility solutions in the African context.

The focus of the PhD would be to develop a fit-for-purpose transport demand and vehicle stock model for an SSA context, building in to it such features as:

–              A transport demand tool based on scenario analysis, allowing extrapolation of business as usual (BaU) trends and alternative demand pathways resulting from land-use policy interventions such as transit-oriented development (TOD) and 15-minute cities, and government involvement in public (formal and informal) transport systems;

–              A vehicle stock model based on the particularities of an SSA vehicle market, including a significant reliance on second-hand imported vehicles;

–              The incorporation of battery swapping and plug-in vehicle charging as competing technologies for electric 2-wheelers, the largest vehicle sectors in many SSA countries.

The PhD is aligned with the £38m FCDO-funded Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme (for which supervisor James Dixon is the transport co-lead), and the outputs of this PhD will be leveraged to improve the outputs of CCG. As such, it is expected that this PhD would lead to a number of high-quality academic publications co-authored between the student and researchers across the CCG consortium including Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Loughborough, Imperial and KTH, and a growing number of international collaborators in SSA countries including Kenya, Zambia and Ghana. There is opportunity to travel to and work with researchers in these countries.

In particular, the demand and vehicle stock model will interface directly with the Open Source energy MOdelling SYStem (OSeMOSYS) and the Data-2-Deal pipeline that has so far been used successfully to construct low-carbon energy system pathways in LMICs, helping to mobilise US$billions in climate finance (e.g. see Godinez-Zamora et al, 2020).

Whilst there has been demonstrable progress in energy systems modelling for LMICs in recent years, the transport sector remains under-represented, due in part to a chronic and persisting lack of data (Collett & Hirmer, 2021). As such, modelling tools must be designed accordingly and fit-for-purpose (Dixon et al., 2023).