Ten households in Shakimali Matborkandi, a village in the Shariatpur district of Bangladesh, have seen a dramatic change over the past year in the way they light their homes and charge their mobile phones.

For decades, these families had little choice but to use kerosene, the most popular fuel in tens of millions of homes in the developing world. But in September 2015, a Bangladeshi company, ME SOLshare, introduced them to what it calls “swarm electrification”.

In a fresh twist on the sharing economy popularized by Uber and Airbnb, ME SOLshare’s pilot project enables the residents of Shakimali Matborkandi to trade electricity among themselves, free of any contact with a local utility.

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