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[Editor's note: February is "Africa Month" on 13.7 Billion Years, focusing on biodiversity, conservation, sustainable development and ethical consumption in Africa.]According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) report "World Energy Outlook 2010," 1.4 billion people do not have electricity. By 2030, based on current trends, that number will be still be very high -- 1.2 billion. That means that if nothing more is done, only 10 million more people per year on average will get electricity over the next 20 years.
That rate is much too slow -- Starbuck's serves 10 million people in just two days. Sure, giving someone electricity is a lot more complicated than giving them a cup of coffee. But that might change on in Sub-Saharan Africa if Lighting Africa has anything to say about it.
A joint program of the World Bank and its private sector lending arm International Finance Corporation (IFC), Lighting Africa "seeks to accelerate the development of markets for modern off-grid lighting products in Sub-Saharan Africa where billions of dollars are spent annually on hazardous and low quality fuel-based lighting," according to their recent report, "Solar Lighting for the Base of the Pyramid - Overview of an Emerging Market."
The program focuses on the benefits of solar portable lights (SPLs), which are safe, inexpensive and much better for the environment than the carbon-emitting kerosene- and other biofuel-based lighting currently used by more than a billion people across the continent.
According to Christine Mungai of the East African , the "growth in mobile phone usage heightens the need for innovators to come up with portable solar products to fill the energy gap, driven by a basic requisite in mobile communications -- the need to charge a cellphone." As of 2009, just 35% of the African population was connected to an electric grid.
"The goal is to mobilize and provide support to the private sector in supplying high-quality, affordable, and safe lighting to 2.5 million people by facilitating the sale of 500,000 off-grid lighting units by 2012 while creating a sustainable commercial platform to realize the vision of providing 250 million people with modern off-grid lighting products by 2030," the report states.
"Promoting the use of improved low cost off-grid lighting technology will provide an avenue for social, health, and economic development, especially for households and small businesses, which will realize significant cost savings and increases in productivity from the transition."
The Lighting Africa project recognizes the basic truth of an old African proverb: "The sun does not forget a village just because it is small."
