In this case study, we apply this more recent approach to examine how the Kenyan off-grid solar PV market was established. The story of the evolution of this market is often described as a private sector led development success, but, as the case study shows, this is a highly simplified interpretation (Ockwell et al., 2017a). Rather, the market was established through the painstaking piecemeal interventions of often donor-funded projects over a long period beginning in the mid1980s. The accumulated impact of these efforts was to build a strengthening innovation system around off-grid solar PV in Kenya, efforts that Ockwell and Byrne (2017) describe as sociot-technical innovation system building.