Research Assistant

Research Assistant — Energy Access & MSME Survey (Nigeria)

Role summary

We are hiring a Research Assistant to support doctoral research on renewable energy adoption and electricity access in Nigeria. The role is part-time, remote-first with periodic travel to fieldwork sites, and runs for an initial 6 months with possible extension through the analysis and write-up phases.

The research spans two linked strands and the final scope is still being set, so the successful candidate will work across both and help narrow them. This is a research post. You will spend your time on literature, data, survey instruments, policy analysis and statistics. It suits a recent MSc graduate, a doctoral student, or an early-career researcher at an energy or development research centre.

About the research

The project runs along two strands. Both are active; the balance between them has not been fixed, and part of this role is helping work out where the strongest contribution lies.

Strand A — adoption and impact. Does adopting solar and battery storage measurably change outcomes for the people and firms that adopt it? For households, that means energy spending, appliance ownership and use, and supply reliability. For micro, small and medium enterprises, it means earnings, energy costs and operating uptime. The strand also asks what drives the adoption decision in the first place, for both groups.

Strand B — regulation and energy access expansion. How does the regulatory environment shape how fast and how far electricity access expands? This strand looks at mini-grid market regulation, the Electricity Act 2023 and the devolution of regulatory authority to states, the federal–state coordination problem that followed, and how developers and programme implementers respond on the ground.

Timing matters for both. Fuel subsidy removal and the 2024 Band A tariff changes reset the economics of backup power for households and businesses alike. Earlier Nigerian studies drew on pre-shock data, looked at solar without storage, or analysed a regulatory framework that has since been repealed.

The methods follow the strands. Strand A is quantitative: a primary household and enterprise survey in two to three locations, combined with Multi-Tier Framework survey data, SMEDAN MSME data and REA programme records, analysed through adoption models, propensity score matching and willingness-to-pay estimation in R. Strand B is qualitative and institutional: key-informant interviews with regulators, developers and agency staff, document analysis of NERC orders and state-level instruments, and geospatial mapping of access and infrastructure.

The dissertation sits in engineering and applied sciences. The work is therefore expected to hold up technically as well as empirically — system-level reasoning about generation, storage and load, not only econometric estimates. Candidates from engineering and from social science backgrounds are equally welcome.

What you will do

• Build and maintain the literature database across both strands — energy access, solar adoption, enterprise and household welfare, and electricity market regulation — with structured summaries of method and findings rather than abstracts copied across.
• Help draft, translate and pilot the household and enterprise survey instruments, and program them in KoboToolbox, ODK or SurveyCTO.
• Compile sampling frames from market associations, SMEDAN records, community registers and local business registers in the selected locations.
• Clean, merge and document survey and secondary datasets in R, with reproducible scripts and a clear codebook.
• Run and check analyses under supervision: probit and logit adoption models, propensity score matching, treatment effect estimation, willingness-to-pay.
• Support the regulatory strand: prepare interview guides, schedule and take notes on key-informant interviews, and code transcripts thematically.
• Assemble and map geospatial data on grid and off-grid infrastructure, planned projects and access tiers, drawing on the Nigeria SE4ALL platform and REA programme records.
• Track Nigerian energy policy as it moves — NERC orders, Electricity Act 2023 implementation at state level, DARES and REA programme updates — and flag what bears on the study.
• Coordinate the field team during data collection: enumerator training support, daily data quality checks, back-checks and flagged-response follow-up.
• Prepare tables, figures, maps and draft sections for conference papers and journal submissions.

Required qualifications

• A Master's degree, or a Bachelor's with equivalent research experience, in engineering (electrical, power systems, mechanical, industrial, systems or energy engineering), economics, agricultural or development economics, statistics, energy studies, public policy, or a closely related field. Both engineering and social science backgrounds are welcome and neither is preferred over the other.
• Working proficiency in R. You should be able to clean a messy dataset, write a reproducible script, and run a regression without a tutorial open. Strong Python, MATLAB or Stata users who are willing to pick up R will be considered.
• Quantitative methods: regression analysis, binary outcome models, and familiarity with at least one causal inference or systems analysis method. Engineering applicants should be comfortable moving between technical system analysis and econometric work.
• Practical experience with digital survey tools (KoboToolbox, ODK, SurveyCTO) and with household or enterprise fieldwork in Nigerian communities and markets.
• Working knowledge of Nigeria's electricity sector: the role of NERC, REA, the distribution companies, mini-grid regulation, the Electricity Act 2023, and the off-grid solar market.
• Clear written English. You will produce text that goes into a dissertation and into journal submissions.

Preferred qualifications

• Modelling and optimization — energy system modelling, techno-economic analysis, least-cost electrification or capacity planning, load profiling, or optimization work in tools such as HOMER, OSeMOSYS, PyPSA, Pyomo or GAMS. The dissertation is examined by an interdisciplinary engineering committee, so technical modelling strength is a real asset.
• Python, alongside R — useful for data pipelines, scraping policy documents and automating repetitive cleaning work.
• ArcGIS or QGIS — the regulatory strand involves mapping access tiers, grid and off-grid infrastructure and planned project sites, so geospatial skill is a real advantage.
• Qualitative methods: interview technique and thematic coding, in NVivo, Dedoose, or an equivalent.
• A publication or working paper in energy engineering, energy economics, energy policy or development economics.
• Affiliation with an energy or development research centre — for example CPEEL at the University of Ibadan, REPRC-EfD at UNN Nsukka, or one of the Energy Commission of Nigeria's research centres.
• Hands-on experience with the Multi-Tier Framework survey instrument, World Bank Enterprise Survey data, or SMEDAN MSME data.
• Experience supervising enumerators or running quality control on a field survey.
• Fluency in Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba alongside English, matched to the fieldwork locations.
• Familiarity with R packages used in this analysis: MatchIt, fixest, tidyverse.
• Prior work on an IRB or research ethics submission.