If Africa electrifies, do Africans stay home or leave?

Solar energy should make rural electrification in Sub-Saharan countries feasible. Then what?

The number of people in Africa with access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa has roughly quadrupled in this century, but the number of people in Africa without electricity has also gone up as the population grows rapidly.

The big plan at present is to rely on solar powered mini-grids rather than the kind of large-scale grids that African countries have had problems maintaining. From the New York Times:

Inside a New Plan to Bring Electricity to 300 Million in Africa

Some $35 billion is aimed at building small solar sites in rural areas and other improvements. The World Bank chief called the project “foundational to everything.”

By Max Bearak Photographs by Malin Fezehai

Max Bearak reported from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the village of Matipwili, where electricity arrived then largely went away.

The leaders of more than half of Africa’s nations gathered this week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s sprawling seaside metropolis, to commit to the biggest burst of spending on electric-power generation in Africa’s history.

The World Bank, African Development Bank and others are pledging at least $35 billion to expand electricity across a continent where more than a half-billion people still don’t have it. About half of the money will go toward solar “minigrids” that serve individual communities. The loans will come at below-market interest rates…

The summit’s promise is to get half of Africa’s 600 million unelectrified people powered up in just six years.

Solar panels costs have been on a spectacular learning curve for the last half century, and many are optimistic that will continue:

Africa of course has lots of strong sunshine.

And, solar seems to have less economy of scale than do other sources of power, which is good for Africa because it doesn’t do big organizations well.

Landlines, whether electrical or telephone, are the kind of high-maintenance system that sub-Saharan Africa isn’t good at.

Consider telephones. Generations ago, under the Bell System monopoly, the United States put together the world’s best landline system. In the 1970s, other advanced countries like Italy had vastly longer waiting lists for telephones than did the US. That’s because Americans were good at running huge organizations like the Bell System. Lots of other cultures aren’t.

Then came cell phones, which required less infrastructure. In the early 2000s, anarchic Somalia became famous for having working cellphone service even without a working government. One Somali cellphone company had 500 of their 800 employees working as armed guards to keep its equipment from being stolen. But, at least it worked.

Now, what Africans need is electricity to power smartphones and Elon Musk’s Starlink to connect remote villagers to the Internet.

So, what could go wrong?

Well, it’s Africa …

In fact, some noted that one need not look farther than the host country, Tanzania, to find a cautionary tale.

Recently the world’s biggest developer of solar minigrids, Colorado-based Husk Power Systems, closed up shop in Tanzania because the government insisted that it sell its electricity at the same price as the heavily subsidized government-run electric utility.

Unable to make money at that price, Husk said, the company sold its assets, which it had spent millions of dollars on, at a steep loss. Some remain intact but are defunct. Others have been dismantled and are being sold for spare parts. …

Husk’s departure left thousands of people powerless and frustrated, as they had been willing to pay Husk’s higher prices. Among them is Mwajuma Mohamed and her family in Matipwili, a community where around 200 houses and businesses briefly got power from a Husk solar minigrid that’s now caked in dust.

“When we got electricity, it was like we were normal people suddenly,” she said, showing a visitor around her darkened house. The first thing she bought, she said, was a TV, which is now back in the box it came in. “It feels unfair. It feels like we wasted money.”

But still, the trend in technology toward more plug and play small systems seems to be in Africa’s favor, not taxing it’s organizational capabilities as hard as 20th Century technology did.

Internet, TV, and lights seem like something solar energy could well provide. Air conditioning, though?

If hundreds of millions more Africans get on the Internet, that will both make life in Africa better and make it much easier to plan to migrate to the First World.