{"id":11891,"date":"2021-01-05T09:57:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T06:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=11891"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","slug":"grid-or-solar-looking-for-the-best-energy-solution-for-the-rural-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2021\/01\/05\/grid-or-solar-looking-for-the-best-energy-solution-for-the-rural-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"Grid or solar: looking for the best energy solution for the rural poor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Asia has made tremendous progress&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.seforall.org\/data-stories\/seforall-analysis-of-sdg7-progress-2020\">in connecting rural areas<\/a>&nbsp;to the electricity grid but the number of people in Africa without access has scarcely changed since 2010. More than&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.seforall.org\/data-stories\/seforall-analysis-of-sdg7-progress-2020\">half a billion<\/a>&nbsp;people in Africa don\u2019t have access to electricity, meaning the continent hosts 72% of the world\u2019s non-electrified population. The UN Sustainable Development Goals have set a universal goal of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sdgs.un.org\/goals\/goal7\">ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy<\/a>&nbsp;for all by 2030. To achieve this, the continent will require a big electrification push.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what kind of electricity makes sense in rural Africa to make the most of available budgets? Over the past decade or so, a range of new off-grid solar products have emerged. They don\u2019t run machinery, but they light rooms, power radios or TVs and charge mobile phones. They\u2019re substantially cheaper than expanding the national electricity grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grid electricity is often said to be critical for long-term human development because it provides sufficient power for appliances and small industries. But are the substantially higher investment costs justified by the economic impact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Empirical studies of the impact of grid electricity on economic development in the Global South show\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/articles?id=10.1257\/jep.34.1.122\">mixed results<\/a>. But it increasingly looks like evidence from Asia and Latin America doesn\u2019t apply to rural Africa. <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/grid-or-solar-looking-for-the-best-energy-solution-for-the-rural-poor-150781\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Asia has made tremendous progress&nbsp;in connecting rural areas&nbsp;to the electricity grid but the number of people in Africa without access has scarcely changed since 2010. More than&nbsp;half a billion&nbsp;people&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}