Sustaining What We Build: Truths and Possibilities from OSEAS 2025

Innovation in the tech world today is moving fast, but sustainability lags behind. This is especially so for the tools meant to serve those on the margins. Open-source technologies promise transparency, collaboration, and adaptability. But without long-term structures of care, support, and ownership, they risk becoming abandoned blueprints that are well-intentioned but irrelevant.

This is especially true in critical sectors like energy access, where the intersection of climate justice, digital infrastructure, and social equity demands trusted systems, rooted in community realities.

That’s why in June 2025, a cross-section of technologists, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, policymakers, funders, and researchers gathered in Nairobi for the second Open Source in Energy Access Summit (OSEAS 2025) — a convening focused on the role of open technologies in accelerating just, inclusive energy access.

Our session, titled “Sustainability Challenges and Opportunities for Open Source Solutions in Energy Access,” was designed not around keynote speeches or slides, but through deep listening and peer exchange. That said, we did start by grounding the group in practical examples — a brief tour of three digital public goods already in use across the energy and governance space:

1. Ushahidi – An open-source technology tool helping marginalized communities gather data, generate insights, and act on issues such as climate change, elections, human rights, or any other issue that affects them.
2. RapidPro – A real-time monitoring and messaging platform developed by TextIt in collaboration with UNICEF, and released under an open-source license to enable wide adoption and community-driven innovation.
3. Magasin – An end-to-end set of mature open-source toolsets that enable organizations to unlock the full potential of their data, driving digital transformation effortlessly.

These three tools, each open-source but built with different origins, funders, and use cases, helped frame the day’s big question:

What does it really take to sustain open-source solutions in the energy access ecosystem?

 

Sustainability Isn’t Just About Funding

In our first round of breakout discussions, we asked participants to name the biggest barriers to sustaining open-source energy access tools:

• Funding gaps remain a core issue, especially for long-term maintenance, not just pilot deployments.
  Limited technical capacity in implementing contexts often stalls progress after initial adoption.
• A lack of community ownership and goodwill makes sustainability fragile.

Yet, embedded in these frustrations were glimmers of possibility:

“Government research institutions could help fill the gap by open-sourcing their data,” one participant noted.
“We need more co-creation — not just consultation — in our implementation models,” another added.

These conversations reminded us that sustainability is not just a financial question — it’s a governance one. It's about trust, ownership, and long-term alignment across institutions and communities.

 

The Policy Puzzle: Collaboration and Constraints

When we asked:
“How can governments collaborate with open-source communities to ensure inclusive energy access that aligns with national development goals?” Two things rose to the top:

• The need for structured data-sharing frameworks between governments and open-source communities.
• The role of direct government funding to support adaptation, localization, and long-term maintenance.

But collaboration also requires clearing legal and regulatory roadblocks. Participants identified several pressing barriers:

• The lack of tax exemptions for non-profit/open-source tools
• Cybersecurity regulations that make it difficult to share or host data openly
• Bureaucratic delays in acquiring permits to deploy or test tools
• A lack of political will or understanding to advance supportive legislation or digital public goods frameworks

“Governments can’t just support open source in words. We need regulatory systems that enable it — and don’t penalize it by default.”

This prompted a wider reflection: If governments see open-source tools as part of national infrastructure, then policy frameworks must evolve to reflect that reality, treating them not as experimental add-ons but as legitimate, scalable public assets.

 

What Would Make a Funder Stay?

In the second round of conversations, the focus turned to funders. What makes an open-source project worth backing long-term?

Key takeaways included:

• A clear demonstration of impact
• Reliable, easy-to-access data and documentation
• Evidence of local ownership and capacity-building
• Transparency in decision-making and deployment
• Interoperability and alignment with national priorities

We also explored models such as:

• Blended finance and co-investment with governments
• Domestic financing through local banks
• Results-based funding
• SaaS models (Software-as-a-Service)
• Crowdsourcing and community contributions

 

Academia: An Underused Sustainability Engine

One of the most energizing parts of the discussion came from academic participants who envisioned universities as long-term stewards of open-source ecosystems. Contributions could include:

• Embedding tools like Ushahidi or RapidPro into academic curricula
• Supporting student-led innovation and tool development
• Creating innovation hubs within institutions
• Training students in participatory data collection
• Supporting policy research that shapes national adoption

As one participant noted:

“Academia can incubate open-source communities that governments and donors often struggle to sustain.”

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

This session at OSEAS 2025 wasn’t about showcasing polished solutions. It was about naming the real tensions, be they funding gaps, policy roadblocks, or the weight of maintaining momentum when attention shifts elsewhere. But it was also about imagining what’s possible when we center the right questions:

• Who truly owns the tools we build?
• How do we ensure they remain relevant across contexts and generations?
• What values are encoded not just in the code, but in the process?

At Ushahidi, we’ve learned that sustainability in open-source is not a destination. It’s a continuous practice. A practice that recognizes that a relationship between people, institutions, ideas, and technology must be nurtured with intention.

We closed with one final takeaway:

Sustainability isn’t something you arrive at — it’s something you steward, continuously, through the relationship between code, people, institutions, and ideas.

And as we look ahead to the future increasingly shaped by powerful tools like AI, we must stay grounded in this truth: the most ethical, enduring technologies are those built with and for the communities they serve. Technologies that honour their voices and priorities, and center their power.

We’re grateful to every voice in the room. And we’re committed — as ever — to ensuring those voices guide what we build, how we build, and how it lasts.