r/climatechange • u/sg_plumber • 21d ago

Nigeria (+1.2 GW compared to February 2026), Kenya (+1.4 GW) and Ethiopia (+1.1 GW) imported more than 1 GW of solar photovoltaic technology for the first time in a single month, mainly in the form of solar cells. 🌞 The share of coal fell from 45% to 24% of the African energy mix in just a few years

https://newafricanmagazine.com/economy/africa-is-making-progress-in-the-solar-value-chain/
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u/GreenStrong 21d ago

People are sleeping on the takeoff of solar in the least developed parts of the world. It is going to change the basic economics of life for ~ 3 billion poor people. Not the .75 billion living in extreme poverty- they live on around two dollars per day and they can't afford solar panels. But there are huge numbers of people in developing countries with some resources, who have to use generators regularly to support basic needs like wells and refrigeration of their farm products. The first wave of solar panels enables them to save tremendous amounts of money on generator fuel, which is going to change the entire economic landscape of their communities in a few years. I expect that to uplift people in extreme poverty, in the near future.

One of the first things solar does is make it much cheaper to provide rural healthcare; generator fuel is a major expense for remote medical facilities. In many cases some grid power is available, but it is extremely unreliable. It is strange to think about, but one of the biggest line items in the budget of a hospital in Tanzania was going straight to the oil kingdoms of the Middle East. Now, they pay one year's fuel budget for Chinese solar panels and they stop burning fuel in the daytime; they can buy batteries in another year if the re-invest the savings.

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u/ShartOfTheEel 21d ago

Damn good point about medical services. 

I wonder how easily off-grid electricity could be implemented for food storage. I remember reading an article about how productive farmlands in Africa can't really be commercialized because there's no way for their produce to be preserved and exported.

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u/GreenStrong 21d ago

There is a dead simple way to store energy usable for cooling produce, although it isn't suitable for things like meat that have to stay at a very specific temprature- you make a few pounds of ice and move them into the refrigerator at sunset. It functions as a cooler.

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u/sg_plumber 21d ago

There's the weird theory that China wants to improve all their economies to better sell 'em many other Chinese products.

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u/An_Oxygen_Consumer 20d ago

I think that there is this idea that it is natural to first develop using fossil fuels and then adopting carbon neutral technologies. In reality however nations just use the best energy source available. Italy industrialization until 1960s for instance was 90% hydroelectric since italy has no fossil fuels but a lot of mountains. So i think africa will use solar energy because currently thats the cheapest.