Over the past decade, PAYGo solar has extended energy access to millions of households excluded from traditional finance.
But as the sector moves into harder-to-reach markets, a structural tension is becoming harder to ignore: integrating sales and credit within a single organisation creates incentive conflicts that weaken credit discipline, drive up default rates, and ultimately raise prices for the customers least able to absorb them.
This paper, produced jointly by MAF Lab and Acumen, explores whether separating credit from sales and distribution could improve affordability, repayment performance, and customer protection and what early pilots in Somalia, Malawi, and other sub-Saharan African countries are beginning to show.
Please find the full white paper at Acumen's website here.