Energy for All in Africa

In this chapter, Professor Sachs discusses some of the continent scale solutions given the advances of energy technologies to enable Africa to break free of its chronic low levels of modern energy services and poverty. Four very much underdeveloped energy resources within the African continent are hydropower, wind power, solar power, and geothermal energy. Although they are big, costly, and as yet pretty much undeveloped projects, by developing these renewable sources of energy, many countries that are currently largely bereft of energy sources could tap into regional grids. The Sahel has infinite opportunities for solar power with complete access to sunshine in the deserts of Mali, Niger, and Chad and always declining prices of photovoltaic cells. There have been natural gas discoveries off the coast of East Africa, which should be carefully used for East Africa’s own development. The shared solar system, a project developed by Professor Modi, is where a village has its own power generation in a microgram of solar panels, and from those, there is a distribution throughout the village of electricity to improve the quality of life by powering small appliances to improve productivity. This video is part of the module Energy and Development.