In the North African Saharan Dessert the massive Solar power project dreamed up at the time of Rommel and dusted off and resurrected the last three years – is nowhere to be found.
Remember Rommel faced an acute Energy crisis during his North African campaign, and looked at the sun for input. His engineers couldn’t deliver an economical solution then anymore than they delivered one now.
Much like promises of the past and during the WWII massive German engineering dreams for the region, this one still sits in the drawing boards of the large German Banking Reinsurance firms. Munich RE and Swiss RE are the largest partners and also the largest banking and Finance Reinsurers – who are dreaming big – but without the entrepreneurial will.
And they don’t even have the spare cash to fund this thing…
Because right about now, the needed 70 + Billion Euros are siphoned off to avert the European Sovereign debt crisis and avert the biggest catastrophe facing the Euro. Ever…
But as the world adapts to climate change, and these massive projects aren’t taking off we recognize that we need to go back to the roots.
Go back to the Roots of mama Africa and really make it work this time.
Simple and effective for a Billion people is what counts…
Not ”projects” complex and unviable in reality – but simple.
Stupid simple and re-iterative easily…
Something that might look good in the Munich engineering and Finance plush carpeted offices – seldom works on the ground in Africa.
Simple in Africa means a thousand years old tradition…
Still done in modern methods yet steeped in tradition.
Simple ways is what we can count on to work.
This is what we have that has been working for the people for ever. Mix it up with tech innovation and simple becomes positively disruptive… Good for a billion people can come out of that.
All Africa hands know this, of course, but the clever IMFers and World Bankers and Washington Consensus newbies and Philanthropocapitalists… [ROFL] and assorted endangered intellectually species ought to pay close attention and hear this.
As a matter of fact make it a mantra and repeat along with your meditation.
Simple ancient work makes sense in Africa. And it creates returns manyfold…
So my advise to You reading this is simple:
Go young man.
Go back to the Roots.
Go to Africa and make your fortune and bring fame to your name.
You girls too. Go…
Going back to the roots means going to the heart of Africa.
This is where, we wake up to the reality that will need carbon sinks to survive.
Carbon sinks similar to the Amazon exist in central Africa too.
Such as the vast rain forests of Congo.
These are the only places to absorb the rising emissions from fossil fuel use around Africa nd the world…
Must preserve these at any cost really…
But not at the cost of human beings starving under them.
Not at the cost of children’s lives lost to constant malnutrition.
And we can save the forests by saving the people first.
Managing the forests and preserving through the work processes of the local people who need the jobs, is what the REDD mechanisms finance… And even if the US doesn’t engage in this process, this year through Cap and Trade legislation, we know the states such as California will…
And we will save the forests because the people there as all Africans understand internally that their survival is linked to that of the forest. They have an intimate connection that is animist and pagan and very difficult for the Western God-myth maker to deeply feel.
The Africans are rooted in the forest but the West doesn’t get that. We need the REDD mechanisms to preserve the forest. Avatar and other such stories are good but useless in understanding the impact of our own lives to the destruction of these ecosystems .
We need the African Rainforest belt much more than what we realize. Therefore we need the African working guardians of the forest even more. That is why we need to engage and assure their prosperity…
And we will need cleaner sources of energy too.
We seek renewable alternatives such as wind power, geothermal, biofuels, hydroelectricity and solar power.
And all of these resources can be found in abundance in Africa, provided the investments can be made with a global partnership of preserving the rainforests through the REDDs and creating renewables through the Carbon Credits.
But it is the constant economy of Agriculture and beneficial plants that are crucial to biofuel production and that will allow people to have proud jobs that will put food on the table… and nourish families.
People here have an unemployement rate of upwards of 67% for able bodied men…
Here comes Jatropha… and the biofuel needs of the world to fuel our economies…
The seeds of the jatropha plant can be converted into oil that can fuel generators and produce electricity.
This is not new, nor the first time it is tried in Congo. Yet some people say that they’ve put together a business model where everyone makes money and the local economy thrives keeping people in the countryside and reinvigorating the villages.
Traditional fossil fuels, primarily diesel for power generators, are currently providing 80 per cent of Africa’s energy. There’s a business opportunity to replace that 80 per cent. The market could be huge.
The market is already there, since people are already buying fuel; so you don’t need to create a new market but you need to create the efficient crop techniques of agricultural production.
Biofuels are a controversial industry in Africa.
The potential is certainly enormous now that both Europe and the United States have passed laws to encourage the use of ethanol to replace fossil fuels, and entrepreneurs are taking advantage by creating sugar-cane plantations in countries such as Sierra Leone to produce ethanol for export to Europe.
Still the EP worries that the plantations encourage land grabs and destruction of the scale of Zimbabwe where classical farms are taken over by force and wanton violence and then amalgamated into huge Industrial scale farms, that push thousands of ordinary people off the land.
Jatropha is also a bit controversial…
It was once hailed as a “miracle plant” that would grow on marginal land, providing a higher income for impoverished farmers. Foreign investors, including huge corporations, jumped into the industry.
Yet now, environmental scientists are now criticizing the jatropha boom, saying it has actually increased poverty in some regions where the jatropha crops were not commercially viable, consumed too much water and required better soil than originally thought.
Many jatropha plantations that have been inspected by the UN environmental officials, who must certify that they are growing the plants on degraded land that cannot be used for food crops – have failed to pass the simple test.
But if they pass and win approval – they qualify for credits under the Clean Development Mechanism, set up under the Kyoto Protocol, which then can sell to polluting companies in wealthier countries.
Companies who want to reduce their emission-cutting obligations, buy these permits and in a simulacrum of a Cap and trade system based in the Kyoto Protocol or the European Schemes, they comply. Only a tiny fraction of CDM credits are currently produced in Africa, but this could rapidly increase as entrepreneurs realize the endless possibilities inherent in the African continent.
Until now, Asia has been the most popular region for CDM projects, with Africa accounting for only 2 per cent of the 2,060 worldwide projects. But this is beginning to change. There are more than 120 CDM projects in Africa today, almost triple the number of three years ago.
One of the biggest CDM projects in Africa is a $600-million wind-power project at Lake Turkana in Kenya, which is expected to produce 300 megawatts of wind-generated electricity. It could provide up to 20 per cent of Kenya’s national electricity supply, replacing 16 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It would produce energy at half the cost of diesel-generated electricity – an encouraging prospect for the three-quarters of Africans who have no access to electricity.
We expect to see a massive scaling-up of renewable energy projects in Africa according to the African Development Bank, which is financing the Kenya wind-power project. You can see the ingredients for something of a Renewable revolution here taking place…
The bank is already developing 26 renewable energy projects across the continent, costing a total of about $11-billion. It aims to be Africa’s leading financier of clean energy.
Solar power, too, is expanding rapidly in Africa. The most ambitious project is the massive $550-billion DESERTEC project, headed by the German companies mentioned above, which would collect energy from solar farms in the Sahara Desert to provide 15 per cent of Europe’s electrical needs by the middle of this century. The project is touted as a huge contribution to the fight against climate change. But the needed 70 Billion Euros to get started haven’t been found anywhere yet….
Hydro power has the same enormous potential in Africa, with only 7 per cent of its potential having been exploited so far. The Congo River alone could produce more electricity than the combined capacity of every nuclear-power station in France. A proposed $80-billion hydro project on the Congo River is still in the planning stages. In total, renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind and solar could provide 80 per cent of Africa’s electricity needs, some experts say.
The Congo Basin is also the location of one of the world’s greatest rain forests, a vast shield against global warming, offsetting almost 2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin, co-chairman of a fund to preserve the Congo forest, says the hydro project on the Congo River is just one of the potential revenue sources that could help to save the forest from illegal logging.
Africa is a major asset and major player in the fight against climate change, but any program for the Congo Basin will have to demonstrate that the forest is worth more alive than dead. If we’re asking the people to keep those forests alive, as opposed to cutting them down, there has to be revenue in it for them.
You can’t have people starving under the trees.
Children soldiers account for almost 30% of all kids.
And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing as children soldiers are fed regularly.
Because in this part of Congo serious malnutrition for children stands at an astonishing rate of 70%…
Yours,
Pano
PS:
What would it take to change this?
Entrepreneurial acumen and working hands tilling the land and engaging in classical methods of forest preservation…
