Socio- technical transitions in humanitarian settings: Solar mini grids for energy- enabled growth in refugee hosting districts in Kenya

The rapid growth of displaced populations has intensified the challenge of providing sustainable energy access in refugee-hosting districts. While solar mini grids have the potential to solve this challenge, they face roadblocks to deployment at scale. Drawing on 32 expert interviews with mini grid developers, investors and decision makers, and 199 surveys with business-owning refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, this paper examines why solar mini grids, despite their technical and financial viability, struggle to scale in humanitarian contexts. Using the Multi-Level Perspective framework as an interpretive lens, the analysis shows how mini grid developers in refugee camps operate within overlapping humanitarian and national energy regimes shaped by temporary relief logics and long-term infrastructural ambitions respectively. These institutional frictions limit coordination, financing, and policy integration, constraining market development. Yet, local entrepreneurship, flexible payment systems, and donor-developer partnerships provide pathways toward more durable energy access models for humanitarian settings. We identify both ways in which niche refugee mini grid developers can shape their business models to best navigate existing regimes, and ways that these regimes can be reformed to support inclusive humanitarian energy innovation at scale. While focusing on Kenya, these lessons can apply more broadly throughout refugee contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.