Lessons from Africa for a Cleaner Energy Future

Africa is a continent with countless challenges, yet the energy question is, of course, a global one. Because ’necessity is the mother of invention’, this panel suggests that it is worthwhile to look at Africa to see what solutions are being found there for energy supply.

First, some facts. 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity. An average refrigerator in the West uses as much electricity as a family in Kenya or Nigeria. And while global energy supply is improving, it is also predicted that by 2030, 90% of people without electricity will be in sub-Saharan Africa.

What happens then: Leapfrogging the grid. Just as mobile telephony meant that the landline telephone network was more or less skipped over, people are now installing solar on their roofs themselves. Because you can’t necessarily count on the government. South Africa is highly dependent on coal, but the high-grade coal is shipped to China, and South Africa itself has to make do with low-grade. And that’s not going to change quickly: The government is closely intertwined with the coal industry.

Three trends stand out:

1. Massive deregulation. Governments realize that they cannot solve the problem quickly and leave it to the private sector. In South Africa, everything under 100 MW can be built by the private sector.
2. Price drops. Solar has dropped significantly in price. But where a shopping mall in the US installs roof panels to slightly reduce their electricity bill, they do it in South Africa so they have light.
3. Climate financing looking for a place. How do you scale solar and storage? There’s funding for that.

What innovations are we seeing now?

In Kenya, there are several examples in agriculture.

• Solar water pumps for irrigation work well for plots of 1-5 ha.
• Solar for food processing: Grinding, drying, etc. This adds value in the food production chain.
• Solar for cold storage units, so that leafy greens, tomatoes stay cool until they go to the market.
• In Uganda, there are companies for electric pressure cookers, allowing families to cook efficiently and quickly on electricity, instead of charcoal and kerosene.
• Street food stalls that operate with solar energy, for example, for grilling.

So, having electricity is not just a ’nice to have’, but it really adds value to the economy. And much, much later on the list of benefits: Lower carbon emissions.

Access to Finance

Money makes a big difference. In South Africa, there is a project called Sun Exchange where anyone can buy a solar panel, which is then placed on a roof somewhere on a school, and the buyer gets a portion of the proceeds. In bitcoin. So you don’t have to live there to help out.

In Zimbabwe, 90% of the jobs are in agriculture. Because there is financing, they now have access to a ‘cold chain’: products can stay cool after harvesting. As a result, they are now selling blueberries, a high-margin product.

In Soweto, people work with ‘saving clubs’ (this has been common in poorer countries for a long time): groups of, say, 40 families save together, and at the end of the month, one of those families can buy a solar panel.

Lessons

What lessons can we learn from this? Decentralization is key in Africa and is thought to increasingly be the case in the West. There is a lot of innovation in battery storage; a smart grid of battery systems can relieve the grid: Batteries can step in when needed, and charge when it is economically optimal.

A fun panel with driven people who are really building something with impact.

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