01/05/2021
*Time We Bring Africa Out of The Dark*
Millions across Africa live without access to electricity. All of us must hatch plans to change that. If you do not appreciate the impact of life without electricity please cooperate for a moment. First, switch off your mains for 48hours and see if you will emerge at the end of it with the same personality. Not easy is it? Now imagine living this way for LIFE!
And notice the silence. No hum of the fridge, no TV, no hot plate, no air-con, not even a radio, no WhatsApp!
Sadly, this is how hundreds of millions of fellow Africans live all their lives.
Electricity must be brought into every hut, home and business across Africa. As far as the Grid is concerned we will still have outages, and in some remote places pylons and substations will take days and months to service. We need 100% electricity pe*******on if Africa is to move out of poverty. This is the first transformative step.
*No electricity*
The tragedy is that, apart from Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco and a few others, this continent is still largely living in the dark ages and, in some countries, less than one home in ten has electricity. To run a modern economy, you need vast amounts of electric power and by this I mean power in giga or terrawatts. For now, much of what we call “baseload power” comes from coal or natural gas, in some countries- oil. Tanzania has recently opened a new coal-fired station on its southern border with Mozambique and Egypt is building one on the Red Sea.
For millions of Africans access to productive electricity is an elusive goal and on a continent where fossil fuels are cheap and plentiful, it’s not the same debate as you might have in Beijing, London or Los Angeles.
That said, urgently we do need to change. Africa must move away from the thought that China, Europe or America is going to dispatch their best brains to come and develop Africa. The reason they are here is purely for their own advantage...even if it means leaving us with gaping holes and silted deserts.
We have lots of brilliant young men and women all across Africa willing to learn the skills to develop the continent. Yet there is this thinking that if a person has not passed 5 O Levels they are not good for anything other than bearing children! Our model of determining who is a genius and who isn't is terriblly flawed. Knowing the thorax of a grasshopper does not make one an automatic genius.
Who brings better economic value and progress - a grasshopper genius with 9 A's or first class degree sitting at home and a Trade Tested Artisan who started off training as a 1 'O' Level holder but supplemented and worked his/her way to become a Chartered Engineer with skills to deploy electricity to the darkest corners of Africa, earning millions and bringing development to communities in the process?
So how can we secure a reliable, incremental economic growth with rapidly deployable clean electricity supply?
Whether your baseload comes from solar, wind, hydro, coal or geothermal you must have the skills to produce, deploy and maintain it. We call that PLAN B. And “B” stands for “Batteries”. Batteries charged with the help of the sun is the lowest hanging fruit to develop all of Africa out if poverty.
Grid electricity is too costly to develop and transmit to that remote village. Even in the continent’s most developed cities — Johannesburg, Nairobi or Cairo — demand for power exceeds supply, resulting in major outages. All too often!
Dressing this up with fancy names like “load shedding”, doesn’t solve the problem, on top of which Africa is notorious for thunderstorms that can knock out entire regions for hours, days or months. So what happens when you to process your maize harvest into mealie meal for markets that buy in tonnes, or teachers giving a science class, or doctors halfway through an operation in rural dotito?
Some may say we can – and usually do – rely on diesel generators but, in addition to producing electricity, they also produce noise and smoke and are liable to run out of imported fuel. Or we can install a bank of batteries, silent, charged from solar, and always full. And like a jig saw set, you can add more and more as may be required.
Crime and militia
We have a chronic problem in Africa with youth unemployment leading to crime, violence and even militias. Listen to captured gang members or those from terror groups and you hear a pattern of lives spent in jobless inactivity. We can change this, . Community factories can change this but not without electric energy
The equation is simple enough: baseload power + uninterrupted supply from batteries = millions out of poverty.
This is not to say it’s going to be easy. Well, the technology is here, and by acting now we can change Africa for the better. Over the next five years, M-Tron Energy is going to do just that, together with our global partners. We are targeting no less than 15,000 young energy experts for Southern and Central Africa.
As we contemplate what the world will look like post-pandemic. I call on my fellow investors along with governments and policy makers to come together and ensure we make choices that will prepare Africa for the future.
If we don’t, the cost will be huge, not just here but everywhere. Remember, before COVID hampered travel, the endless arrival of migrants? For the most part, those boats on the Med were not carrying people from warzones but youngsters fleeing poverty and unemployment.
It is hard not to feel hopeless when you live in the dark.
The battle to electrify Africa can be won and Africa's young have this role thrust firmly in their court.
It is time to move beyond excuses or blaming the past or saying how Africa is different. Africans share the same human needs as people anywhere.
The technology is here, the market is ready and the generations to come will rightly cry “Shame on you!” if we fail. This is why M-Tron Africa and the SETA FOUNDATION found it necessary to partner with the Gov't, ILO and civil representatives to design a mass energy training curriculum to bring this know-how to every corner of Africa. As we speak, invitations have gone out to recruit and train the first batch of apprentices to graduate with Class 1 journeyman. Limited places have been opened for the first course. More will follow as we evaluate the performance of the first streams.
Courses include:
NC - ND in Solar PV Installation, Marketing and Maintenance;
NC - ND Electical Engineering;
NC - ND Instrumentation and Control.
CLASS 1 Journeyman Level
Inhouse Attachment at M-Tron Energy Ltd.
