The walk out of the rural kitchen: towards planning energy services for sustainable rural livelihoods in Sudan

This thesis is about rural energy services, the problems with accessibility and the consequences of their inaccessibility on rural livelihoods in the traditional rural areas of Sudan. The thesis is organised in six chapters. Chapter 1 starts by providing a background to the political and economic context of Sudan, and introduces the energy planning efforts made, so far, in Sudan. The chapter ends with formulating the research problem, the research objective and the research questions. It shows how traditional rural areas are excluded from the benefits of modern energy access because they are excluded at all stages of the energy planning process. Due to this exclusion, rural areas are not served by modern energy carriers (petroleum and electricity) and continue to draw their energy services from traditional energy carriers (wood, residues and animate sources). As a result, Sudanese rural areas suffer the consequences of negative livelihoods outcomes (displacement, civil unrest, war and many others hardships). The exclusion of rural areas from energy planning processes can be divided into two forms: spatial exclusion and methodological exclusion.