SYNOPSIS: The Government of Ethiopia has laid out an ambitious vision for expanding electricity access over the next 5 years—enshrined in the National Electrification Plan 2.0—and has made increased agricultural productivity and renewable energy sources a central pillar of that approach. With 85% of Ethiopian livelihoods tied to agriculture, improving productivity in the sector has the potential to not only increase rural incomes, but also provide the anchor loads to support reliable, financially sustainable power system expansion to remote areas, including through off-grid approaches. To achieve this goal, however, a deeper understanding is needed of the critical inputs to improved agriculture productivity in the Ethiopian context: appropriate crop mix, water needs and availability, productive use equipment demands and supply chains, energy service options, the role of value added processing, and the type of supportive policy that would be most efficacious. Aiming to support this, Duke University’s Energy Access Project (EAP) is launching an effort focused on providing analysis that informs energy, agriculture, and water policy-making and which ultimately de-risks related investments in these sectors.
READER REQUIREMENTS: Readers with professional experience related to agriculture and rural economies in developing countries and comfortable with economic modelling needed. Readers ideally have a background in politics and agriculture in low and middle income countries; rural economies; modelling and integrated modelling; readers familiar with rural electrification in developing countries strongly encouraged.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT: In the fall semester students will prepare one major assignment. They will draft and complete a proposal for a team project (approximately 1200 words, or 4-5 double-spaced pages), working in teams of four to five people. The proposal should include background and context based on the readings, lectures, and discussions conducted to date, as well as the description of a problem of interest or area that you would like to investigate further. We will provide additional details for this assignment during the fall semester.
In the spring, we expect you to (i) write a capstone paper, (ii) deliver an oral presentation (with slides), and (iii) write a brief summary, suitable for publication in blog format. All three of these deliverables would be team efforts, working in teams of two to three people (probably, but not necessarily, the same team as you worked with in the fall). The capstone paper would provide a detailed summary of your work over the spring; the specific topic / project will unfold over the late fall and early spring, and would be the same as (or closely related to) the paper you write in the fall. The capstone paper would summarize background and context, as well as a review of relevant literature (policy / grey literature as well as relevant academic literature), description of data that you collected or assembled, documentation of analytical methods, and a detailed analysis of the problem and solution that you developed over the course of the year.
The presentation and brief summary / blog publication would develop the same ideas, but in somewhat different formats. We will provide additional details for all three (related) assignments during the course of the year. Note that we may ask for intermediate deliverables over the course of the spring semester to help you refine your ideas and ensure you are receiving feedback in an organized manner as you develop your solution / analysis.
Finally, we will ask the entire class to work together to produce a final poster. This is a requirement for all Bass Connections teams: to produce a team poster to display at the
SYLLABUS: ENERGY395_Fetter_Syllabus
