Decentralized options for energy are a solution to the needs of rural populations that will remain cut-off from large networks for the foreseeable future. We can draw particularly informative lessons from the experience of actions conducted in different African countries, both in terms of approaches to management and the involvement of benefiting parties, as well as regarding the potential to expand on a vast scale. A social and economic analysis of such decentralized approaches shows that they are demanding in terms of shared responsibility, interaction between actors, pricing and the financial means necessary for their implementation. There is clearly no miracle solution: decentralized energy is a path that is both extremely complex yet unavoidable.