Africa is a vast and diverse continent with great untapped economic potential, yet extreme poverty continues to blight the lives of hundreds of millions of people. As many as 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity, according to the World Bank. That is more than the entire population of Europe.
Nor is Africa alone in this. Worldwide, some 840 million people still have to do without electricity. In recent years, however, great strides have been made in linking millions of people in rural areas up to steady supplies of power, not least in several African nations. In Kenya, people’s access to electricity has increased from a mere 8% in 2000 to around 73% today with plans in the works for universal access by 2022. In Ethiopia, meanwhile, an estimated 45% of the population can now enjoy the benefits of electricity, a marked increase from a rate of 5% just two decades ago.
Much of the progress has been thanks to a large-scale adoption of renewables, especially solar and wind, which is just as well since experts emphasize a need for low-carbon solutions in bringing power to the people, both literally and figuratively speaking. “A stable power supply is a prerequisite of economic development and industrialization. Developing nations in Asia, Africa and South America are all heavily investing in power generation with an especial emphasis on less pollution,” explains Prof. Firoz Alam, an expert at the School of Engineering of RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Read more…
