AFRICA - Energy desert

See those blue dots? Each is a power plant. This striking image gives you a sense of the availability of electricity (regardless of source) across the world. Compare the US and Europe to Africa and you will see the remarkable lack of access to electricity in Africa. Lack of access to electricity means lack of access to opportunity, modern healthcare, education, and modern technology.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) calls for access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030. According to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/) 77 percent of the global populations without electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa. If current trends continue 670 million people will continue to lack access to electricity in 2030. With current trends only 67 percent of the global population will have access to clean cooking fuels by 2030, putting the health of 2.4 billion people at risk because they must rely on inefficient and polluting methods.

The Africa Minigrids Developers Association (AMDA)?https://africamda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Benchmarking-Africa-Minigrids-Report-2022-Key-Findings.pdf found that the World bank estimates that 140,000 minigrids are needed in Africa by 2030. This amounts to 17,000 per year. However, the certification process in African countries is slow and geared towards connections to national grids. Minigrids have had an excellent track record with national grids experiencing 75 percent more outages per month than decentralized minigrids. In 2020 developers created 900 new jobs while building and maintaining minigrids. For every 100kW deployed 7 permanent direct jobs are created. We must act to generate the funding and development of clean, affordable, and reliable energy for all. Energy is a human right.