Women constitute 51 per cent of Sierra Leone’s population of 6 million. They are responsible for nearly all household duties, from food production and processing to child bearing and family upbringing. Often, however, women are viewed not as individuals but as part of a male-headed household with some unique needs of their own related to …
Improving life for women and girls in Sierra Leone Read More »
Although Latin America has experienced a successful decade of reduction in poverty and inequality, it continues to be the most unequal region in the world1. The persistence of high levels of social injustice is not accidental: its profound structural causes are rooted in unfair political, economic and social institutional frameworks, which have been shaped throughout …
Energy and ICT for educational inclusion in Latin America Read More »
There is a kerosene lamp known in the Luganda language as tadooba. It burns like a candle and it gives off thick dark smoke that slowly causes a black coating on the roof of the house, the walls, the furniture and other household items. It is the commonest type of lamp used in poor homesteads …
Providing the world’s poor with modern energy services represents an investment challenge. The United Nations Sustainable Energy For All (SE4All) initiative estimates that energy access in developing countries requires investments of US$ 45 billion annually by 2030 to step up to this challenge1. This means that the US$ 9 billion per year currently invested in …
Will private-sector finance support off-grid energy? Read More »
It is hard to talk about development in off-grid villages without talking about energy. Health, education, food security, productive enterprise and environmental well-being, as well as participatory democracy, can all be achieved if good policies are in place, but they depend not only on access to energy but on the provision of information. Sustainable and …
Energy policies for off-grid villages in Tanzania Read More »
If energy poverty and access is such a pressing social problem, why do we need to involve governments in addressing it at all? In other words, why won’t the market devise solutions and innovative business models for expanding access to modern energy services? Or, why don’t major institutions like the United Nations or the World …
The right to vote is generally considered a fundamental right of each citizen, underpinning all other basic rights – to food, education and security. And the world’s most enthusiastic voters live in India’s 650,000 villages. At the heart of India’s democratic system have been regular elections that now see the participation of more than 100 …
In spite of much technological progress, many countries as well as communities within countries suffer from food insecurity; one in seven people in the developing world remains food insecure. Food security involves concurrent attention to availability, which is a function of production; access, which is a function of purchasing power; and absorption, which is a …
Energy provision and food security in off-grid villages Read More »
In 2007, I was invited by a colleague to teach a global technology course to Princeton students at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. This is a wildlife research centre located in the Laikipia district of Kenya, which has a population of about 250,000 people in a land area about twice the size of Israel. …
Electricity first made its appearance in the region in 1894, when two prominent local Selangor-based Malayan entrepreneurs, Loke Yew and Thamboosamy Pillay, started to use electric pumps for tin mining. By the mid-1920s, several small generating plants had been established using a variety of fuels including low-grade coal, local wood, charcoal and bunker oil. A …
Summary Much is said about moving to a biobased economy (BBE) for the production of food, feed, fuels, materials and products1 particularly in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals and delivering on the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, published in 2016 and 2015, respectively. The question considered here is whether the better provision of biomass …
Is biomass a sustainable energy solution for off-grid villages in developing countries? Read More »
As the global population is still rising – albeit at a decreasing rate – we can expect an additional billion or more people in the next 10 years and yet another billion by 20401. Simple mathematical calculations would suggest that the number of off-grid global poor will nearly double within a decade. And the world …
Access to energy, especially for rural communities, represents a central pillar of development. For the more than a billion people in the world without reliable access, the provision of electricity will have a huge impact on their livelihoods as it is crucial for human well-being and development. Without a reliable energy supply it is difficult …
Transforming rural communities through mini-grids Read More »
Two critically important and linked challenges face the global community in the 21st century: the persistence of widespread energy poverty and the resulting loss of economic opportunity; and intensifying human-driven climate disruption. These crises are inexorably linked through the energy technology systems that have so far provided the vast majority of our energy: fossil fuels. …
Worldwide, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.7 billion are still cooking on harmful and inefficient stoves1. Many live in remote rural village communities, and until they have access to energy services, little progress can be made to develop and improve their lives2. As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated, “energy …