Africa poised for solar lighting boom

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/global-warming/news/africa-poised-for-solar-lighting-boom.html

Africa poised for solar lighting boom

Dann Okoth

22 December 2010 | EN

As many as 120 million households in Africa will be living off-grid by 2015, creating one of the world's largest markets for portable solar lighting in the next five years, according to a report.

'Solar Lighting for the Base of the Pyramid — Overview of an Emerging Market' was published by Lighting Africa, a joint International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank initiative that is developing continent-wide programmes for solar lighting.

The report projects an up to 65 per cent growth rate in sales of portable solar lights, comparable to the recent explosion in mobile phone sales on the continent. Currently, only 0.5 per cent of some 140 million African people living without regular or reliable access to electricity have such lights.

The growth will be fuelled by entrepreneurs using the http://www.scidev.org/en/new-technologies/">latest technologies and designing products to suit consumers' tastes, the report says. But the market could grow even faster if distribution and financing were scaled up, it says.

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[diane in sf]

1. It's cheaper than using batteries or generators in these remote, poor areas

[NNadir]

2. Do you have any idea of the per capita income of say, Mali?

I really, really, really, really can't stand it when clueless remote bourgeois consumer Americans Westerners buy into this horseshit that allows them to feel smug about their electric car fantasies.

If the solar fantasy worked, all of our bourgeois consumerist Americans would be driving swell solar electric cars, rather than wasting energy on the internet offering dumb ass fantasies about them. Westerners can't afford solar systems without huge "subsidize the rich" tax breaks, and now we're hearing horseshit about Africa.

The anti-nukes here are a lot less annoying when they don't pretend to give a rat's ass about human poverty.

Merry Christmas.

[Kolesar]

3. If you can't stand it, you don't have to read the forum or participate here

:nopity: :dunce: :argh: :wtf: :think: ;(