A critical analysis of the alternative energy-poverty discourse with a case of Kasese district in Uganda: New sites, actors, identities, language, and visions of power

Abstract: One of the central themes in recent sustainable Development debates is the idea that alternative energy technological solutions can also alleviate poverty in parts of the global South. This idea is earmarked in this study as the alternative energy-poverty discourse. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and Post-development theory; the study questions the extent to which the premise of this discourse is possible by carrying out an analysis of discourses of different actors on a renewable energy project in Kasese district, western Uganda. Basing on its language on poverty and the measures proposed to address it; the study finds that the alternative energy-poverty discourse, in many ways, has an ideological relationship with the mainstream Development agenda, in which the logics of the latter are reinforced by the former. It is to be emphasized that the current upsurge of optimism around renewable energies and their relationship with social questions like poverty needs to be transcended, even subverted, if social problems connected to the ‘old’ energy regime are to be effectively addressed in the regime of renewables. Social questions like poverty are complex. Attempts to address them need to embrace this complexity. There are no ‘easy answers’. ‘Easy answers’, like most of those advanced by many promoters of renewable energies in places like Kasese, should be treated with deep suspicion. There is need for an honest debate regarding new forms of energy and social questions like poverty, a debate that can, indeed, be enriched by insights from Post-development theory.