Sustainable supply chain practices as catalyst for energy poverty alleviation in developing countries: a necessary condition analysis

Okeke, Augustine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0418-0128 and Ifeanyi, Onyemere (2025) Sustainable supply chain practices as catalyst for energy poverty alleviation in developing countries: a necessary condition analysis. Discover Sustainability, 6 . article no. 357.

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Abstract

Energy poverty remains a critical obstacle to socioeconomic progress in developing countries, affecting over 733 million people globally. This study investigates how sustainable supply chain practices serve as catalysts for alleviating energy poverty, focusing on efficient logistics, local sourcing, community engagement, regular maintenance, and training programs. Employing Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), the research identifies indispensable supply chain conditions for successful renewable energy deployment. The findings reveal that efficient logistics and community engagement have the most significant impact, requiring minimum thresholds to ensure energy access effectiveness. Though moderate in effect size, local sourcing and training programs are equally essential for long-term sustainability. Regular maintenance emerged as a critical factor, underscoring the importance of ongoing support. The study integrates Necessary Condition Theory, Energy Justice Framework, and Socio-Technical Systems Theory to demonstrate that these practices must be complementary rather than substitutive. The results provide actionable insights for managers and policymakers, advocating targeted investments in supply chain resilience and local capacity building. By offering an understanding of the interplay between supply chain management and energy access, this research advances theoretical and practical frameworks for tackling energy poverty. Future studies should explore these dynamics across different sectors to generalise the findings further.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Discover Sustainability
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	2662-9984
Departments:	Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership > Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS)
Data access:	The datasets generated by the survey research during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Mendeley Data repository https://doi.org/10.17632/fgxw3b8j5d.1. These are also available from the corresponding author.
Data access URL:	https://doi.org/10.17632/fgxw3b8j5d.1
Additional Information:	Augustine Okeke, Lecturer in Leadership & Sustainability, Institute of Business, Industry & Leadership, University of Cumbria, UK. Ifeanyi Onyemere, University of Sunderland, UK. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.
Depositing User:	Augustine Okeke
Date Deposited:	09 May 2025 09:38
Last Modified:	11 May 2025 08:00
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8806

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