Tim McDonnell on how Tanzania is fighting poverty with solar panels: -Erika Lusela Murandika just wants to be able to watch the evening news. The 76-year-old farmer lives in Kanyala village in northern Tanzania, 60 miles from the nearest town thats connected to the electric grid. For years, hes powered a tiny TV set in the dim sitting room of his concrete house here with a diesel generator, spending roughly $10 each month on fuel—money that could otherwise buy more than 20 pounds of rice in a country where the per capita GDP is $695. Earlier this year, on the advice of friends, he invested $400 in a small, 80-watt solar system. After charging all day under the East African sun, it can run his TV for two hours. The system was a pain in the neck to install, he says, and the battery is unreliable, but its still an improvement over the generator. And here, as in most of rural Africa, there arent many options. Its a joke to think well all be connected to the grid, he says with a rueful grin. Some joke. Nineteen percent of the global population lives without access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. In Africa, that number is 58 percent. The vast majority of those without power are in rural areas. In Tanzania specifically, 86 percent of the population has no electricity, a fact that was illustrated when the lights cut out at President Obamas hotel in Dar es Salaam during a visit he made there last year to dedicate $7 billion for energy access improvements across the continent. Tanzanians still get 76 percent of their energy—mostly for heating and cooking—from charcoal, wood, and other biomass. So theres more at stake than turning on the lights: Indoor air pollution kills more than 4 million people every year, more than AIDS and malaria combined. Increasing access to clean energy is literally a matter of life or death. In Tanzania, the population is predominantly rural and scattered in small villages across vast reaches of terrain, while the state-owned utility is chronically cash-strapped and urban-focused. So Murandikas pessimism about the grid is almost certainly justified. But just as the mobile phone revolution in Africa dramatically reduced the need for telephone landlines, solar power is now leapfrogging the electric grid. Like Murandika, thousands of rural Africans are turning to solar as the solution, in a clean-energy boom that development experts say could become a catalyst for widespread economic empowerment.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:00:01 +0000
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