By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has advised African leaders to make use of the continent’s solar resources to provide clean electricity to its people.
In a chat with CNN, she suggested that microgrids could be easily installed in rural areas to supply electricity to the people.
Despite possessing 60 per cent of the world’s solar resources, Africa only accounts for 1 per cent of the world’s total solar panel capacity, according to the 2022 Africa Energy Outlook by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“Africa has these critical minerals, lithium, you name it, all of them. We also have the potential for green hydrogen. Kenya is 95% clean energy. Many African countries have that potential. Put the two together. You can use clean energy to produce some of these critical minerals.
“You can have these many micro-grids that can be more easily installed in rural areas and give our people access to light.
“So, let’s do that and that will take care of a large requirement. Now we come to industry, and we do have a right to industrialise.
“So, there we have this issue. That’s why we say that to some of our developing countries, let’s not be hypocritical.
“We will need a transition where gas is better than oil. Let’s use that until we have more new technology that can help us with cleaner energy,” the WTO chief said.
The Head of Unit for Tracking Sustainable Transitions at IEA, Mr Daniel Wetzel, identified financing as the major problem with the continent.
“The major challenge for investment in Africa is financing. In Africa the cost to finance a solar project, the same size solar project that would be built in Europe costs three to four times more just because of the returns that are expected on financing because of the higher risks,” he submitted.
But a few companies are looking into this and one of them is ARTsolar, which boasts a state-of-the-art production facility in Durban.
“Effectively, we make 1,760 solar panels a day at peak capacity. We can reduce breakages, and increase efficiency in terms of production and cycle times in the various stages of manufacturing, and that is how AI is being used in the manufacturing process.
“A big consumer of ours is Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia. We are also supplying into Mauritius right now.
In Nigeria… we’ve supplied into Nigeria for the last 10 years. We’re involved in the street lighting programs,” its General Manager, Viren Gosai, said.
In sub-Saharan Africa, in 2019, 25 million Africans had home solar systems, and in 2022, 45 million had the systems installed, providing 4 electricity to African households.
Kenya’s Sun King Solar, is a world leader in off-grid solar systems, though its Vice President for Pay-As-You-Go in East and Southern Africa, Mr Victor Agandi, said, “We are currently in nine countries. We have Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, that’s East Africa.
“We have Mozambique, Malawi, Cameroon, Togo, and of course, Nigeria. We have over 79 stores in Nigeria with I think almost two million households right now installed in Nigeria.”
