Saturday, April 26, 2014

Adopting Sustainable Green Energy In Africa

By Agnes Dickson


Most of energy consumed in Africa is not clean. Starting with the firewood and charcoal use in rural areas, to use of electricity in industries as well as fuels on the roads, all these sources lead to emissions of carbon in the atmosphere. With these emissions, there is increased air pollution, rise in health conditions mostly affecting the chest and also destruction of forests. For this reason, sustainable green energy in Africa needs to be adopted.

Green energy is obtained from all the natural sources such as the sun, wind, geothermal heat, tides, waves and rain. The continent has a lot of these resources as it enjoys sunlight almost throughout the year while its coasts receive substantial amounts of tides, waves and winds yearly. It is therefore a shock that most African nations are not utilizing well these sources.

These natural sources should replace the conventional sources such as electricity, motor fuel, charcoal and firewood in the continent. Not only are the green sources clean, they are also sustainable in that the present generation will be able to enjoy it without interfering the future generation from enjoying it. Therefore it will be a double win for the continent.

One of the advantages that will result with this adoption is poverty reduction. A lot of people especially in rural areas of Africa live in poverty. This is because there are no employment opportunities for them probably because no industry can be set up in the rural areas as there is no electricity. But with use of say solar power, setting up industries in rural areas can be possible and this will lead to employment of people and hence reduction of poverty levels as people will be earning income.

Apart from poverty reduction, environmental pollution will be reduced greatly by this adaptation. Use of charcoal and firewood has lead to increased air pollution in many countries as well as deforestation. The poor quality of air has resulted to increased chest conditions in many people mostly children and women. Drought has also been associated with the diminishing forest cover. With green power, all these problems will be reduced.

Numerous African countries experience political instability due to its citizens fighting over resources like oil. But with the use of natural power sources which are abundant, persons will no longer have to fight over control of limited natural power sources in a nation. This will see many countries get political stability and allow for economic development.

Adjusting to these clean sources of power may be the ultimate goal of many African countries. But the problem arises in the fact that most of these nations cannot afford on their own to finance infrastructure needed for this switch. Also they do not have enough expertise to set up this system and therefore this has seen the benefits of green energy accrued in small domestic scale.

To realize the ultimate goal of the alternative power replacing conventional sources one time, the continent ought to come up with policies that support this. Apart from this, they ought to establish infrastructure for this by seeking various financial options. There should also be nongovernmental organizations set up to carry out research, implementation, and dissemination of information to rural populations as well as lobbying and networking.




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