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Abstract
Over the past decade, Vanuatu has experienced one of the most dramatic off‑grid solar transitions in the Pacific. Solar systems now underpin everyday life across rural communities, providing lighting, communication and other basic energy services in places far beyond the reach of grid-based infrastructure. Yet this rapid adoption of solar hardware has outpaced the development of the skills, supply chains and support systems needed to keep them functioning. The result is a growing challenge of disrepair and solar e‑waste, with products failing long before their time, not because they are too complex to fix, but because knowledge of maintenance practices, access to repair services and access to spare parts remain limited across the archipelago. In a nation facing frequent volcanic activity and intensifying climate disasters such as cyclones, the reliability of these solar systems has become central to community resilience.
Fixim Sola was established to respond to this critical gap by building the “people infrastructure” required to sustain Vanuatu’s off‑grid energy future. In close partnership with local institutions, organisations and communities, this pilot initiative has demonstrated how locally embedded repair capacity can extend the life of solar systems, strengthen disaster preparedness and create new technical pathways for livelihoods, particularly youth. In this lecture, we will explore the core premise behind Fixim Sola, reflect on the outcomes emerging from the pilot phase, and outline how the program is now being scaled into a national model, one that spans vocational training, secondary education and community‑level repair networks to support a resilient, Pacific‑led renewable energy transition. Team Fixim Sola Vanuatu including Dr Shanil Samarakoon, Dr Joyce Wu and Associate Professor Paul Munro won the 2026 Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Collaboration.
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Brief Bio
Associate Professor Paul Munro
UNSW Human Geography
Paul Munro is a Scientia Associate Professor in Human Geography in the School of Humanities and Languages within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at UNSW Sydney. His research spans political ecology, energy justice and environmental history, with a particular focus on off‑grid solar markets, repair economies and electricity access in sub‑Saharan Africa and the Pacific. He also has long‑standing research interests in forest governance and conservation in West Africa.
Before entering academia, he co‑founded Energy for Opportunity, a Sierra Leone‑based organisation delivering solar projects across West Africa. He is a co‑lead of Fixim Sola, a solar repair training initiative in Vanuatu, and an investigator on an ARC Linkage project examining off‑grid solar repair in Malawi and Zambia, on which Dr Shanil Samarakoon also serves as an investigator. He has published more than forty peer‑reviewed articles and chapters, including in Nature Energy, Energy Research and Social Science and Energy Policy. His books include Colonial Seeds in African Soil (Berghahn, 2020) and Electricity Capital and Energy Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
Dr Shanil Samarakoon
UNSW SPREE
Dr Shanil Samarakoon is a human geographer whose work focuses on issues of energy justice across Australia, sub‑Saharan Africa and the Pacific. His research is informed by more than fifteen years of field experience on remote, off‑grid renewable energy projects in Malawi and Sri Lanka, including co‑founding Zuwa Energy, a solar company based in Malawi.
He is a Senior Research Associate at SPREE, where he examines how diverse stakeholders shape and navigate transitions to renewable energy technologies. In Australia, his work explores emerging trends in renewable energy procurement and household energy practices. In Southern Africa and the Pacific, he collaborates closely with communities to investigate the socio‑technical dimensions of solar maintenance, repair and e‑waste, and to support interventions that strengthen local repair ecosystems.
Dr Samarakoon is a co‑lead of Fixim Sola, a solar repair training initiative in Vanuatu, and an investigator on an ARC Linkage project examining off‑grid solar repair in Malawi and Zambia.
