Shouldn’t a higher priority still be expanding coverage of the grid? I’m sure there will always be some market for off-grid use cases but those should be a tiny niche.
Expanding the grid faces a totally different set of roadblocks than expanding individual household's capacity to generate power.
Much of the extant Third World is in its Third World-ey condition because of abysmal governance. That is usually accompanied by infestation of power and grid companies by grandnephews of top politicians etc.; those companies handle a lot of money, are highly centralized, and are thus a prime target for graft.
The bizarre story of South African ESKOM and poisoning of the director who was asked to reduce corruption comes to mind. [0]
That's gonna require you to jump through a lot of hoops and it might not even make economical sense at this point in time to build out the grid. It might not ever. You want to cook now, fuel solves that problem.
It's a complicated solution. On top of deployment of renewable energy production, it requires building efuel manufacturing and distribution network. Even if that's doable, it's not something that can be built immediately. And even if built, I don't see how it can compete in impoverished areas with just cutting down whatever is around.
And in the end, it only solves cooking. Electrification solves many more problems at once, and notably refrigeration.
