How Lights Change Lives

Expecting to electrify 300 million Africans by 2030, Mission 300 is meeting in Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam. They hope to illuminate NASA’s very dim nighttime image of Africa.

African Electrification

One woman’s story explains how electric power changed her life. As a Tanzanian food kiosk owner, she accessed electricity a year (or so) ago. As a result, if busy, now she can close her shop at midnight rather than 6 pm. With her new refrigerators, she can preserve food, sell cold soft drinks, and increase her income. Late at night, in newly lit village streets, she feels safer walking home. Meanwhile, power at home means her children can do their homework after dark. Similarly, her neighbors have established and grown businesses.

Mission 300

Scheduled for yesterday and today, with 1500 participants from the public and private sectors, Mission 300 envisions massive collaboration that will start with $40 billion from the African Development Bank and the World Bank. Now, a grid need not cover the continent, and the Western model of massive power plants need not be copied. Whereas building a grid had been prohibitively expensive, the recent potential of alternative energy sources makes it possible to reach “the last mile.” It will involve selecting the “least cost” source of an electricity network and planning how remote areas will receive it.

Alternatives like solar panels on home and shop roofs make it all possible:

Still, governments need to target regulations and funding; businesses need the incentive to invest; and households need technology that government might initially provide.

Since 83% of the world’s population without access to electricity lives in sub-Saharan Africa, the goal is colossal.

Our Bottom Line: Infrastructures

An infrastructure is a network of connections. If it’s transport, then those connections include roads, bridges, planes and trains, seaports and airports. In the United States, a 19th century financial infrastructure emerged through a network of banks that connected savers and borrowers. Through a U.S. financial infrastructure, money traveled around the economy. The U.S. information infrastructure began with Benjamin Franklin and the 18th century postal service. Today it continues online.

Ostensibly about African electrification, Mission 300 is really creating and depending on a synergy among a host of infrastructures. For it all to work, they need finance and transport and communication. Expressed by conference leaders, the private sector needs predictable currencies, regulatory frameworks, and land acquisition. They hope to attract global philanthropists.

More practically, today, as the conferences concludes, they are generating a timeline and country specific targets. Maybe then, in 2030, NASA can show us Africa’s nighttime lights.

My sources and more: Thanks to the BBC’s World Business Report for inspiring today’s post. From there,  World Bank and Africa Daily podcasts had more detail. In addition, NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio had the images and Mission 300, an update.