We have been seeing a lot of good news about renewable energy, including reaching Peak Carbon and Peak Pollution, so that it is all downhill from here, globally, toward Carbon Neutrality. But not in Africa, which lacks financial and other resources.
Why Isn’t Solar Scaling in Africa?
The World Bank aimed to set Africa on a course to sustainable energy. Instead, it shed light on how a lack of transparency in the climate and development industry hampers progress.
Though home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, Africa today represents just 1% of installed solar photovoltaic capacity.The entire region of 1.2 billion people has just one-fifth the solar capacity of cloudy, temperate Germany.
In 2015, the private sector arm of the World Bank launched Scaling Solar to prove that bundling support for investments could blaze a trail to a solar future for everyone. Its first big project was impressive: Zambia, one of the world’s poorest countries, was able not only to attract private capital but also to slash costs for power by more than 80%. Scaling Solar’s next project in Senegal came in even cheaper. Then a 2019 solar farm in Uzbekistan was even lower. And then … nothing.
This claim is rather exaggerated. The program has four more projects in development, in Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Niger, and Togo. But it is still a disaster to have seven projects in 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2022, all of Africa added less new solar capacity than Belgium. That year, at least 30 countries on the continent added no new utility-scale solar capacity at all.
In 2015, the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector arm, rolled out Scaling Solar, a high-profile initiative funded in part by a $5 million grant from the U.S.-government-led Power Africa. Expectations were huge. The IFC’s rollout claimed that “large-scale photovoltaic solar power can be quickly and economically developed.”
There can be no question of this premise—if the needed help is forthcoming.