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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 n

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        > 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 2y ago
      > 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][1]. Most notably, 20-25% of Rwanda's GDP remains Aid driven unlike their closest peer Uganda who now has 15% of GDP derived from ICT and an additional 10% from Finance. Yet Uganda doesn't beat their drum despite also being a personalist dictatorship. Museveni is a dick (and I went to school with some opposition members of his), but I will hand it to his administration - they concentrate on administrative capacity to a certain extent. > 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 (he's now helping Lithuania and other Baltic States). [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147110 [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847829 [2] - https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/d/daniel-oliver-rogger https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/d/daniel-oliver-ro...
mempko 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  And how, pray tell, is the money being siphoned off to the evil colonial empires?
  - tmnvix 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  Why does africans send their capital to US, Europe and Asia?
viktour19 2y ago
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-hydrogen-rocks-0408 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 2y ago
  Promising but how do pipelines deal with hydrogen?
  - arcmechanica 2y ago
    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
    - throwaway4220 2y ago
      This must limit electricity generation to local hydrogen sources which may be challenging compared to natural gas. Prob similar to nuclear?
bsder 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  Nigeria has higher population density than the US.
  - bsder 2y ago
    https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/201807 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.
    - tpm 2y ago
      Point is it's not caused by low population density.
conradev 2y ago
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-impact-report https://www.m-kopa.com/newsroom/m-kopa-releases-annual-impac...
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
reverendjames 2y ago
These mini grids will never lift any African country into modernity. The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.
- totallynothoney 2y ago
  > The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. This is false, like logic wise even if your assumptions were true. You might say that supposed cost right now is fake. If it's actually much higher (accounting for batteries or NatGas) the ridiculous drop in price from panels still means that the cost is falling. > If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty. They are probably not gonna be smelting with arc furnaces in bumbfuck-nowhere, Nigeria; but that's also not happening in some hamlet in the UK. African cities and resource extractions areas already have power grinds, the problem are rural areas.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    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-and-battery-deal-to-help-secure-future-of-smelters-and-refineries/ 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)
- devilbunny 2y ago
  I mean, it's not going to turn these countries into rich places, but the article points out several ways that having power - even intermittent power - at a very low cost has improved people's lives significantly. They no longer have to walk miles to get drinking water; they drilled a well and put in an electric pump. Water towers are pretty straightforward tech; run the pump during the day until the tower is full, and the villagers can walk a couple of blocks to the spigot to get water. Charge spare phone batteries during the day. Any task that doesn't actually have to run 24 hours a day can take advantage of the power when it's there.
naijarando 2y ago
[dead]

bluGill 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
    > 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][1]. Most notably, 20-25% of Rwanda's GDP remains Aid driven unlike their closest peer Uganda who now has 15% of GDP derived from ICT and an additional 10% from Finance. Yet Uganda doesn't beat their drum despite also being a personalist dictatorship. Museveni is a dick (and I went to school with some opposition members of his), but I will hand it to his administration - they concentrate on administrative capacity to a certain extent. > 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 (he's now helping Lithuania and other Baltic States). [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147110 [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847829 [2] - https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/d/daniel-oliver-rogger https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/d/daniel-oliver-ro...

mempko 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
And how, pray tell, is the money being siphoned off to the evil colonial empires?
- tmnvix 2y ago
  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 2y ago
Why does africans send their capital to US, Europe and Asia?

viktour19 2y ago

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-hydrogen-rocks-0408 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 2y ago
Promising but how do pipelines deal with hydrogen?
- arcmechanica 2y ago
  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
  - throwaway4220 2y ago
    This must limit electricity generation to local hydrogen sources which may be challenging compared to natural gas. Prob similar to nuclear?

bsder 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
Nigeria has higher population density than the US.
- bsder 2y ago
  https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/201807 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.
  - tpm 2y ago
    Point is it's not caused by low population density.

conradev 2y ago

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-impact-report https://www.m-kopa.com/newsroom/m-kopa-releases-annual-impac...

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

reverendjames 2y ago

These mini grids will never lift any African country into modernity. The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.

totallynothoney 2y ago
> The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. This is false, like logic wise even if your assumptions were true. You might say that supposed cost right now is fake. If it's actually much higher (accounting for batteries or NatGas) the ridiculous drop in price from panels still means that the cost is falling. > If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty. They are probably not gonna be smelting with arc furnaces in bumbfuck-nowhere, Nigeria; but that's also not happening in some hamlet in the UK. African cities and resource extractions areas already have power grinds, the problem are rural areas.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  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-and-battery-deal-to-help-secure-future-of-smelters-and-refineries/ 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)
devilbunny 2y ago
I mean, it's not going to turn these countries into rich places, but the article points out several ways that having power - even intermittent power - at a very low cost has improved people's lives significantly. They no longer have to walk miles to get drinking water; they drilled a well and put in an electric pump. Water towers are pretty straightforward tech; run the pump during the day until the tower is full, and the villagers can walk a couple of blocks to the spigot to get water. Charge spare phone batteries during the day. Any task that doesn't actually have to run 24 hours a day can take advantage of the power when it's there.

naijarando 2y ago

[dead]