[HN Gopher] For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on sola...
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For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids
Author : rntn
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-03-15 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| Filligree wrote:
| Because they failed to maintain or invest in a regular grid. Off-
| grid, battery-backed is far more expensive than generator-backed
| at scale... at least for now. And you still need generators for
| poor weather.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Youre also forgetting another component which is that the
| instrastructure gets torn down or stolen because it has market
| value. The replacement, maintenance, and security of wired
| grids is likely higher.
| curiousmind96 wrote:
| Why would infrastructure get torn down once it's in place?
| dgacmu wrote:
| Copper wire has high resale value. So do solar panels.
| Copper theft is a problem worldwide, including the US.
| atonse wrote:
| I was at my local Home Depot last weekend and the rep
| told me that just a few weeks prior, a couple people
| stole a couple rolls of electrical wire (romex) and the
| value was over $4,000 because of the cost of the copper
| in it.
|
| I was buying a 15ft strand and it was $18.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Copper as a commodity is currently worth under $5/pound:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper
|
| It's probably worth even less if you have to resell wire
| to recycling businesses of the "no questions about where
| you got it" variety. Are these wire rolls large enough to
| contain a thousand pounds of copper?
| zdragnar wrote:
| The local militia or government wants money and doesn't
| care overmuch about the locals themselves, presumably.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| You seem to have conveniently forgotten about centuries of
| colonialism, resource exploitation and state-sponsored regime
| changes, which still plague Africa today.
| twoodfin wrote:
| How would you differentiate Africa from East Asia in those
| regards?
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| 1) se asia is a much more densely populated region, making
| infrastructure cheaper per capita to produce (some things
| scale better, most do not) and 2) se asia has capital
| flowing through it at a far higher volume, mostly because
| of manufacturing.
|
| I can't speak to why there historically hasn't been as much
| manufacturing in Africa--I'm guessing it's just cheaper to
| colocate with others for lower costs across the board?
|
| Regardless, (neo)colonialism does dominate both regions--
| it's a hard state to avoid if you want to interact with a
| global economy at a deep financial disadvantage.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > se asia is a much more densely populated region, making
| infrastructure cheaper per capita to produce
|
| Most of South East Asia has developmental indicators
| comparable to most of Sub Saharan Africa. Sub Saharan
| Africa has plenty of basket cases (DRC, CAR, Mozambique),
| but it also has plenty of countries on the same general
| trajectory as South East Asian countries (Kenya, Nigeria,
| Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal). "Africa" and "Asia" is broad
| and it's dumb ti compare the two.
|
| > se asia has capital flowing through it at a far higher
| volume, mostly because of manufacturing
|
| Not exactly. Much of South East Asia has strong capital
| market integrations with Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and
| South Korea which makes it easier for liquid capital to
| flow.
|
| African nations that have integrated their capital
| markets with foreign markets open to taking risks in LDCs
| (UAE, China, India) have seen a leapfrogging in economic
| capabilities. You see this with Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya,
| and Uganda.
|
| > se asia
|
| What do you mean by SEA? And what do you mean by East
| Asia?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Most of South East Asia has developmental indicators
| comparable to most of Sub Saharan Africa.
|
| Africa GDP Per Capita (2023)
|
| Kenya: 1,952.30 USD
|
| Nigeria: 1,596.64 USD
|
| Uganda: 1,002.31 USD
|
| Tanzania: 1,224.49 USD
|
| Senegal: 1,706.44 USD
|
| South East Asia GDP Per Capita (2023)
|
| Brunei: 32,962.91 USD
|
| Myanmar: 1,233.20 USD
|
| Cambodia: 2,429.75 USD
|
| Timor-Leste: 1,502.52 USD
|
| Indonesia: 4,8976.31 USD
|
| Laos: 2,066.95 USD
|
| Malaysia: 11,379.09 USD
|
| The Philippines: 3,804.87 USD
|
| Singapore: 84,734.26 USD
|
| Thailand: 7,182.03 USD
|
| Vietnam: 4,282.09 USD
|
| Africa HDI (2022)
|
| Kenya: 0.601
|
| Nigeria: 0.548
|
| Uganda: 0.550
|
| Tanzania: 0.532
|
| Senegal: 0.517
|
| South East Asia HDI (2022)
|
| Brunei: 0.823
|
| Myanmar: 0.608
|
| Cambodia: 0.6
|
| Timor-Leste: 0.566
|
| Indonesia: 0.713
|
| Laos: 0.620
|
| Malaysia: 0.807
|
| The Philippines: 0.710
|
| Singapore: 0.949
|
| Thailand: 0.803
|
| Vietnam: 0.726
|
| Africa Under-Five Mortality (2020, Estimates):
|
| Kenya: 29.8
|
| Nigeria: 59.8
|
| Uganda: 32.6
|
| Tanzania: 36.4
|
| Senegal: 45.7
|
| South East Asia Under-Five Mortality Rates (2020,
| Estimates):
|
| Brunei: 8.8
|
| Myanmar: 31.7
|
| Cambodia: 43.7
|
| Timor-Leste: 31.7
|
| Indonesia: 20.4
|
| Laos: 45.6
|
| Malaysia: 11.4
|
| The Philippines: 20.0
|
| Singapore: 2.3
|
| Thailand: 8.6
|
| Vietnam: 15.7
| mmooss wrote:
| Let's look at the successful economies of East Asia:
|
| Japan was a first world country, an economic success before
| WWII, and then had the US occupation after the war to
| rebuild it economically and politically as a hedge against
| future Japanese threats and against Russia and China.
|
| South Korea never suffered Western colonialism (?) but did
| suffer under Japan. After that and the Korean War, iirc it
| was one of the poorest places on Earth. Now they are among
| the wealthiest and most free, maybe the greatest such
| accomplishment ever. They also benefitted from direct US
| support, as a counter-balance to the neighboring communist
| states.
|
| Taiwan has direct US support to contain the communist
| regime in mainland China, first as a right-wing
| authoritarian dictatorship and then as a democracy.
|
| China suffered 50-150 years of Western colonialsm,
| depending on how you measure it (the UK still controlled
| Hong Kong until the late 1990s). They were very poor into
| the 1990s. Then, opening their economy to investment (a
| project begun in the late 1970s), and with major
| manufacturing economies as neighbors (Japan, Taiwan, S
| Korea, etc.), they became the center of global
| manufacturing and trade and reaped the financial benefits.
|
| By comparison, how will African countries attract
| investment? They are geopolitically located in a place that
| matters, and are not the global center of population nor
| many of the other Chinese advantages such as a massive
| single market that complied with Western requirements,
| proximity to wealthy neighbors such as Japan, Taiwan, etc.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I would assume that Africa will in fact be the global
| center of population in a few decades? Natural resources
| plus population is usually a winning formula for long-
| term growth.
| mmooss wrote:
| Compare all of Africa with East Asia. The latter is a
| heavily coastal population along an oceanic trade route,
| also near the massive South Asian population.
|
| Also, Africa doesn't have the geopoitical importance, an
| accident of geography but a reality. Unless and until
| world power changes dramatically to Africa from the US,
| Europe, and East Asia, it doesn't seem like that will
| change.
|
| That doesn't mean they can't grow wealthier, etc. But
| compared to East Asian countries, they lack the means to
| compel investment
| mmooss wrote:
| > They are geopolitically located in a place that matters
|
| I meant, 'they are _not_ geopolitically located in a
| place that matters '. Oops.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Most colonization in Asia occurred in the South and
| Southeastern regions.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
|
| https://developmentreimagined.com/infographic-exploring-afri...
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly (center map on
| Africa)
|
| Africa is leapfrogging legacy electrical infra models, and
| likely has no need for the legacy model of centralized
| generation and long haul transmission to load centers.
|
| (the battery costs in the Our World in Data citation are
| already out of date, and as of 2023, the average global price
| of batteries was $95/kWh, see
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-...
| | https://archive.today/DklaA for more)
| astral_drama wrote:
| I recently bought 4 lifepo4 12v 100ah ~1200 wh for $159 off
| Amazon as a retail customer. Battery storage is indeed cheap
| and accessible to the average person. Pair it with new 24%
| efficient solar panels and you can see why there's little to
| be gained by running expensive lines to distribute power when
| it can be sent everywhere wirelessly.
|
| It's not too different to how developing counties rolled out
| wireless Internet and gained a huge benefit without much
| infrastructure investment.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed, and that is current state; renewables and battery
| manufacturing continues to ramp, which will encourage
| further cost declines. This is objectively good, it
| democratizes low carbon, cheap energy.
| breakyerself wrote:
| It's been obvious for a long time this was going to be the
| development path for Africa. Just as they leapfrogged land line
| telephones for cellular. Africa was never going to build out
| massive coal and natural gas based electrical grids with
| transmission lines substations and utility poles bringing
| electricity to every home. The capital isn't there and the cost
| of renewables keeps falling.
| bluGill wrote:
| Grids are better if you have the capital to build them. Most of
| arfica has been too unstable to safely invest in. Everytime
| things start looking up there is another revolution and all
| investment is lost.
|
| Of course with the large number of countries there, that
| generalization is false. But it is overall close a enough to
| true.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Most of arfica (sic) has been too unstable to safely invest
| in. Everytime things start looking up there is another
| revolution and all investment is lost
|
| You can't view Africa with such broad strokes. A West African
| country with British administrative norms like Nigeria is
| going to have entirely different outcomes compared to a
| former Portuguese colony impacted by the Colonial Wars like
| Mozambique.
|
| Reality is, plenty of African countries do have the right
| building blocks, and are seeing a significant amount of
| capital investment from the Gulf States, China, and India
| because their investors understand how to operate in similar
| conditions from 10-30 years ago.
|
| Whenever an African country like Nigeria or Kenya does
| something good, it's positive attributes as masked as part of
| "Africa" so Western donor organizations can continue to
| justify spending in basket cases like Rwanda or Mozambique,
| which is what this article itself is doing.
|
| The Mini-Grid project in the article is a program that
| private and public sector players in Nigeria worked on, and
| only succeeded because of Nigeria's administrative apparatus
| and 10 years of hard work (started back in 2015-16).
|
| The only learning this provides is that
|
| 1. You need a relatively competent bureaucratic system in
| order to actually execute on initiatives
|
| 2. You need to have a robust domestic private sector that
| works closely with the public sector and foreign investors
|
| 3. This can only be done through a profit motivation, not a
| local or international non-profit boondoggle, as that's the
| only way to unlock the economies of scale needed and
| incentivize execution
| decimalenough wrote:
| Are you really characterizing Nigeria's notoriously
| kleptocratic bureaucratic system as "relatively competent",
| while self-styled Singapore of Africa Rwanda is a "basket
| case"? Most observers would reverse those labels.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I think the example would have been better if they had
| put Ghana in the place of Nigeria.
|
| I have no idea how anyone did an analysis of the
| stability of African nations, and came out of it thinking
| Nigeria was an example to hold up as some kind of gold
| standard? It reinforces my belief that we Westerners, as
| a group, know very little about the African continent.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > they had put Ghana in the place of Nigeria
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| > reinforces my belief that we Westerners, as a group,
| know very little about the African continent
|
| Or normies like you only listen to BTP Adviser funded
| submarine articles.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Singapore of Africa Rwanda is a "basket case"
|
| They spent dozens of millions of dollars on PR to make
| themselves the "Singapore of Africa".
|
| I've documented this on HN previously [0].
|
| Most notably, 20-25% of Rwanda's GDP remains Aid driven
| compared to their closest peer Uganda.
|
| > Nigeria's notoriously kleptocratic bureaucratic system
|
| They are not the most efficient, but the Nigerian Civil
| Service has drastically reformed over the past 15 years.
| Daniel "Dan" Roggers has been instrumental in this change
| [2], specifically by revamping the Nigerian Civil Service
| in the early 2010s as part of a World Bank bailout.
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147110
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847829
|
| [2] - https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/d/daniel-
| oliver-ro...
| mempko wrote:
| You are wrong, the capital IS there, Africa is rich, it's just
| the capitsl is leaving for US, Europe, and Asia, instead of
| staying in Africa because of colonial history.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Plenty of African nations are building strong private sector
| players.
|
| Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, and Ghana are all building
| competitive local financial markets and private sector
| players.
|
| There are plenty of Sub-Saharan states are remain perpetually
| underdeveloped, but that's ignoring plenty of foundational
| work happening in plenty of other African states.
|
| The main difference is administrative capacity - some states
| have relatively decent bureaucracies and administrative
| norms, others don't.
|
| It's up to individual countries political and economic
| leadership to decide which track they want to take.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| They do have a private sector, and that should be lauded.
|
| But we also have to be honest and concede that while the
| others may have usable rule of law to varying degrees,
| Nigeria has a _looong_ way to go in this regard. Uganda
| could use a bit of help as well in that dimension.
| jisnsm wrote:
| And how, pray tell, is the money being siphoned off to the
| evil colonial empires?
| tmnvix wrote:
| I think the usual explanation involves debt repayments.
|
| There are others, such as forced structural adjustments
| (e.g. privatisation) and currency control (in the case of
| the French and former West African colonies).
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Why does africans send their capital to US, Europe and Asia?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Stop saying "Africans".
|
| Each African country has a different context, and it does a
| disservice to laggards and over performers to club everyone
| as "African".
|
| There are unique administrative hurdles and innovations
| that African countries have to either spark industries or
| smother them.
|
| Humans are the same irrespective of our country of origin -
| the main difference is how public and private institutions
| manage humans.
| viktour19 wrote:
| The world's first hydrogen exploration company was founded in
| Mali. No one knows for a fact what the development pathway is.
| Solar might turn out to be inconsequential.
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2024/iwnetim-abate-aims-extract-hydroge...
|
| > In 1987, well-diggers drilling for water in Mali in Western
| Africa uncovered a natural hydrogen deposit, causing an
| explosion. Decades later, Malian entrepreneur Aliou Diallo and
| his Canadian oil and gas company tapped the well and used an
| engine to burn hydrogen and power electricity in the nearby
| village.
|
| > Ditching oil and gas, Diallo launched Hydroma, the world's
| first hydrogen exploration enterprise. The company is drilling
| wells near the original site that have yielded high
| concentrations of the gas.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Promising but how do pipelines deal with hydrogen?
| arcmechanica wrote:
| They leak, hydrogen is smaller then all other atoms, so
| they are hard to contain. local production and immediate
| use is the only option that makes sense. Pipelines are non-
| sensical
| bsder wrote:
| > The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps
| falling.
|
| It doesn't help that Africa is huge and the population density
| of most of it is damn near zero. Grids of any form make very
| little sense given those constraints.
| tpm wrote:
| Nigeria has higher population density than the US.
| conradev wrote:
| Yes, and in many cases it's the same companies enabling both:
| Over 1 million solar home systems sold, avoiding 2 million
| tonnes of CO2 emissions Over 1 million individuals
| access high-quality smartphones, enabling access to information
| and earning opportunities online
|
| all because they figured this out: $600 million
| of credit unlocked for customers
|
| https://www.m-kopa.com/newsroom/m-kopa-releases-annual-impac...
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Mini-grids may be the part the EU is missing. Selling your
| surplus ev power to grid is a huge waste, charging your
| neighbours car is a better use.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| But with mini grids you'll just end up with over supply during
| sunshine/wind with nobody at all to sell the excess to
| adrianN wrote:
| In the near future most cars could be happy to accept a
| charge
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > you'll just end up with over supply during sunshine/wind
|
| You will only need enough storage to cover 12-24 hours to
| reduce that a lot: Much of the surplus power can be put into
| vehicles when they're resting at home overnight, or for
| evening and next morning peak.
|
| For the rest, well, so what? Temporary "oversupply" on days
| when there's lots of sun and no vehicle to charge up is not
| the worst problem to have - it won't kill anyone. The worst
| that you can say about it is that it's a misallocation of
| resources to sometimes have the power supply that you can't
| use or sell. But solar panels and batteries are becoming
| cheap. So the upside of having occasional surplus remains,
| the downside diminishes.
| bpfrh wrote:
| The problem is not necessarily day/night but summer with
| solar+and possible wind and winter with less solar and
| possible no wind.
|
| So you need to store energy for more than a few hours or
| generate it from something else.
|
| You then have the choice to use batteries(costly for
| megwatts as of now), things like hydrostorage, fossil
| fuels(gas/coal/oil) or hydrogen generated from renewable
| sources.
|
| If you need big energy storages anyway, it makes more sense
| that communities pool their money together and invest in
| something like hydrostorage, but then you need a grid to
| connect the communities and if you do that, you might as
| well connect everything in the country so the grid is
| better at balancing.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The problem is not necessarily day/night but summer
| with solar+and possible wind and winter with less solar
| and possible no wind.
|
| So they have to buy some 30% more panels.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly why you would over-provision. So the
| upside of having occasional surplus is that in other
| times such as winter with less solar, you are more likely
| to still have enough capacity.
| hgomersall wrote:
| And you'll be churning out hydrogen all summer.
| manmal wrote:
| That's a problem big grids also share. It's probably easier
| to buffer power for a small neighborhood, than for a city.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| Can you use the spare electricity to stockpile some sodium
| hydroxide or something?
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Selling your surplus ev power to grid is a huge waste,
| charging your neighbours car is a better use.
|
| Electricity is fungible (ignoring transmission losses), so
| what's the difference?
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| taxes and fees. But yea it would not be allowed on a real
| scale without new taxes and fees and then that benefit is
| removed.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think transmission losses are exactly the point? Locally,
| the losses are practically zero, the further you need to push
| it, the more significant various losses become. If you could
| line up someone's production to someone else nearby who needs
| to consume, as a whole the system would incur considerably
| less losses, no?
| dehrmann wrote:
| US grid transmission losses are estimated to be 5%. You'd
| come out ahead pretty quickly if your neighbors can't use
| your surplus.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > US grid transmission losses are estimated to be 5%
|
| That's interesting, I had always assumed it would be far
| higher. Could I trouble you for a source?
| dehrmann wrote:
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I think transmission losses are exactly the point?
|
| That can't be, your panel is charging up your neighbor's
| car in exactly the same way independently of you being
| connected to outside of your neighborhood.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| instead of innovation or investment the only thing the EU does
| is legislation and policy. it's really sad. :(
| alephnerd wrote:
| Small pet peeve - saying "Africa" is too broad a statement for a
| continent with 54 countries, and does a disservice to the actual
| government institutions working on development.
|
| They should explicitly call out Nigeria instead of treating it as
| "Africa". Nigeria is unique in how they actually have a formal
| industrial strategy for mini-grids [0] thanks to World Bank
| support [1]
|
| It's a uniquely Nigerian program and Nigeria's Rural
| Electrification Administration (REA) should be given it's due
| credit. When Boko Haram does something bad it's "Nigeria", but
| when Abuja does something good it's "Africa".
|
| Finally, what works for a federal state with a relatively strong
| civil service like Nigeria cannot be replicated in every
| "African" country, due to entirely different administrative and
| bureaucratic norms and capacity.
|
| [0] - https://rea.gov.ng/minigrids/
|
| [1] -
| https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/1ea...
| frereubu wrote:
| This gets my goat as well, particularly given how _vast_ Africa
| is (the Mercator projection does it no favours in that regard)
| and the diversity of cultures.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Amen to all of that. It feels like all discourse about Africa
| is either super negative ("heart of darkness") or super
| paternalistic ("white/outsider [asian and middle eastern
| countries use the same discourse] savior complex").
|
| It's similar to the discourse I'd see about Asia as a kid
| 20-30 years ago, and ignores a lot of the tangible on the
| ground innovations happening.
| mmooss wrote:
| That was my first thought.
|
| Let's say you are an editor: You can be accurate and write
| 'Nigeria' in the headline, but you realize that most people
| have no idea where or what Nigeria is - that's a bad thing, but
| true. If you write 'Africa', then many more people will learn
| about Nigeria.
|
| I don't have a good answer. Maybe they should squeeze both into
| the headline: 'For African climate and livelihoods, Nigeria
| bets big ...'
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Maybe they should squeeze both into the headline: 'For
| African climate and livelihoods, Nigeria bets big ...'
|
| Yep! That's what I feel is much more constructive as a title,
| because it both gives credit to the originator of a success
| AND makes it potentially generalizable.
|
| Btw, the proposed title you mentioned is the norm for
| reporting on the minigrid project in business news.
| scns wrote:
| > Small pet peeve - saying "Africa" is too broad a statement
| for a continent with 54 countries
|
| And in one of those 54, Cameroon to be exact, there are over
| 300 languages spoken.
| johnohara wrote:
| To get a good insight into the problems faced by nations in West
| Africa and Southwest Africa as they try to implement electricity-
| based technologies to their populations, I highly recommend
| watching Season 7 of Itchy Boots on YouTube [0].
|
| Her experiences as she "adventure rides" through this region
| tacitly documents the true nature of "life as it is lived" by the
| millions and millions of human beings residing there.
|
| It is stunning to consider and is an Africa I never knew existed.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8M9dV_BySaXNvQ_V1q4U...
| jpm_sd wrote:
| OnePower is another organization doing this very successfully in
| Lesotho
|
| https://1pwrafrica.com/
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Why are solar panels subject to VAT? If it's the way of the
| future and we want everyone to buy and use them then why are
| there taxes on them?
| HPsquared wrote:
| If people are buying them because they're a good idea and
| profitable / economical.. of course the state will want a cut.
| That's how it always works, everywhere.
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