For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

> everyone I know

Not a representative sample of Western humanity. Look up surveys on knowledge and beliefs; you'll be very surprised.

I hesitate to write this, but can you please read an entire post before your respond? If you could you would see that I made it clear my point was broadly true but has plenty of exceptions.

Ethiopia is threating to decend into a another civil war. Military Coups happens someplace every few years. ISIS is doing their terrorism in the north east. Lately Kenya has been one of the better countries in the region, but who knows if that will continue - I wish them luck.

Even in context of Nigeria, all your points miss the important fact that if the government isn't stable and protects you from crime/terrorists all investments are a waste as they will be destroyed.

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.

https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/201807

An island of density in a sea of empty.

And Nigeria's grid has its own set of issues.

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

Rio Tinto's smelters in Australia are already deploying batteries and renewables because relying on coal would make them too expensive:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/rio-tinto-signs-massive-solar-an...

> There is no reason why, in some places, (firm and reliable supply) cannot be achieved via a mix of intermittent renewables, provided that this mix is ‘firmed’ via batteries and other sources.

> “The hurdle here is not technical, it is, … the overall net economic cost of the combined solution. This is materially helped by the continuous downward trend of battery costs, but the incremental cost of the last percentages of firming can indeed prove expensive.”

(Also of relevance, Australia is actually replacing some long distance grid connections with mini solar grids as a cost reduction move, which suggests mini grids are the right option for remote communities)

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.

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.

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).

Well that goes without saying.

Perhaps easier but less versatile. A large storage site connected to a national high voltage grid can take electricity from a much wider variety of sources and send it to a wider variety of consumers.

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.

US grid transmission losses are estimated to be 5%. You'd come out ahead pretty quickly if your neighbors can't use your surplus.

> 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.

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.

The local militia or government wants money and doesn't care overmuch about the locals themselves, presumably.

Copper wire has high resale value. So do solar panels. Copper theft is a problem worldwide, including the US.

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.

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.

Most colonization in Asia occurred in the South and Southeastern regions.