Sub Saharan Africa Case Study

On the vast continent of Africa, there are fifty-three countries; of these only six are not located below the Sahara Desert. This leaves the Sub-Saharan region of Africa to encompass a total of forty-seven countries. Many of these countries south of the Sahara have been in state failure, either partial or complete collapse of state authority. This has led to an inability to

Sustainable development in the energy sector continues to be a focal point on the international agenda. Goal 7 aims to bring universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services as well as increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix (United Nations, 2017). Energy is currently the dominant contributor to climate change, accounting for around 60 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past century, New Zealand’s energy needs has doubled every 22 years, increasing by over 2 percent each year (Energy Efficiency and Conservation

A major challenge and cause of serious medical issues in Sub-Saharan Africa is the lack of access to a clean water supply. There are 345 million people that lack access to water in Africa. Unfortunately, when water is available it is high in contamination. When wells are built and water sanitation facilities are developed, they cannot be maintained properly to due to limited financial resources. Water quality testing is not performed as often as necessary and the people are unaware that the water may not be safe to drink. Oftentimes, when a source of water has been provided, the quantity of water is often given more attention over the quality of. Lack of clean drinking is the leading cause of diarrheal diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa and causes 7.7% of deaths in Africa. Diarrhea is caused by numerous bacterial, viral and parasitic organisms most of which can be spread by contaminated water. The importance of diarrheal diseases has mostly been overlooked. Through UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) there have been some accomplishments during the

Sub-Saharan Africa, being a tropical region, ranks as one of the hottest regions on earth. This area receives more solar insulation than several other tropical regions. Thanks to technological advancements, hot temperatures do not cause a serious problem in the developed world. In these developed areas, heat only causes problems when power supply has been knocked out by storms or other hard-to-avoid occurrences. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, millions of people do not have access to electricity from grid connections. This means that these persons live in one of the earth’s hottest regions, yet have restricted access to the technologies that would have made life bearable.

The sub-Saharan region of Africa has traditionally been seen by the Western world as a barrier between the more "civilized" areas of the northern part of the continent that were colonized by Europeans and the deep, jungle regions common to the rest of the continent. The area below the Sahara desert was seen by colonial settlers as wild and dangerous. It was treated as its own separate entity, but in reality, this is not the case at all. Sub-Saharan Africa is very diversified in terms of ethnicities, languages, economics, politics, religion, and more. While it may still not be as industrialized as the northern part of Africa (with the exception of the country of South Africa), it is a very vibrant, diverse, and intriguing region of the world. In fact, the African Union prefers that the Sahara desert be seen as a bridge between northern and southern Africa, and not a barrier between two different worlds. In fact, the Sahara desert itself and its harsh climate and landscape, which makes it difficult to traverse it, has been the main reason for the prevailing view of there being two Africas. Until recently, interaction between the two regions was not an easy or common thing, precisely because of the Sahara desert itself sitting in the middle of the continent.

1. Agriculture as a key industry in sub-Saharan Africa and Australia is under threat from severe drought, and drought triggers a series of chain-reactions.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s grain yields roughly one third of other developing regions of the planet. Part of the problem is Africa's age-old dependence on rain-fed agriculture in a savanna climate, where the risks of drought are ever present. Sub-Saharan Africa lacks the river-based irrigation systems of South and East Asia. Another urgent problem with Africa's agriculture is that Africa's soils have been depleted of nutrients because impoverished farmers have been unable to afford fertilizers to replenish their soils. Older techniques for replenishing soil nutrients, such as the rotation of farm lands, allowing the replenishment of nutrients on land left to fallow for 10 or 20 years, are no longer feasible. Rising land scarcity because of

In the final analysis, some energy experts raised economic concerns that solar installations in rural communities were costly and that the power offered by grids is too limited to meet the growing needs of African countries (Galliot, 2015). For example, a senior fellow (Mwangi Kimenyi) with the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institute in Washington claimed that Africa must not be

Nigeria and Angola are both West African countries plagued by the resource curse. The countries are teeming with oil, ranking Nigeria as Africa’s largest oil producer and Angola as the second largest oil producer. In 2014 it was reported that Nigeria was responsible for producing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day and Angola produced 1.8 million barrels of oil per day. While these numbers have fluctuated greatly in the past, both countries still remain at the top as Africa’s oil producers. The production of oil in Nigeria and Angola has brought in a great deal of profit to both countries, however, it has also come along with a number of complications. “Fuel abundance in less developed countries tends to generate negative developmental

This section will discuss the main themes and present the findings which arose from the interview process and subsequent data analysis. This section will define and discuss GDP per capita based on the World Bank’s 2016 data. Sub-Saharan African countries that are currently worked in by chosen NGOs are then categorized as disadvantaged, mid-advantaged and advantaged based on GDP per capita. The GDP data of countries that NGOs are funding is important for this research because it contributes to my hypothesis, as I believed that more advantaged and mid-advantaged countries were chosen because of the high amount of resources in those countries. it seemed initially that funding and resources were what drove NGOs choices on which countries to

Sub-Saharan region as low developing countries are claimed to have a low electricity access and modern cooking access though they have a large supply of energy resources. In the recent years, there is a huge jump of their economic performances, however, the improvement is limited because of the inefficiencies of power sector and poor power infrastructure are dragging its back. In line with the population growth in Africa, they all become the constraints of further economic development due to the lowering of electricity access rate. Thus, the low generation and access levels will result in a low per capita consumption. In fact, not only traditional biomass fuels lead to an unstable electricity supply, drawbacks to the economic, social and environmental aspects are also brought by the severe indoor air pollution which may damage human health. The three readings below give readers a thorough and detailed analysis based on the ways to widen the energy access in sub-Saharan Africa in order to achieve the energy access goal set by the FEMA and some regional economic organisations.

In December 2013, the first cases occurred in Guéckédou and Macenta districts, the focus of

Many countries have already invested in renewable energy technologies to provide electricity to their populations. Therefore, target 7.2 is being measured. For instance, De Jong, Sanchez, Esquerre, Kalid & Torres conducted research to study the efficiency of wind and solar energy in Brazil. Their results indicated that these renewable energies could manage the electrical grid requirements in “an efficient and more environmentally friendly manner than fossil fuel power plants” (De Jong et al., 2013).

Eskom generates 96.7% of power used in the country, with a current nominal capacity of 44.175MW installed. To put things into perspective, it’s estimated that South Africa will need 40.000 MW’s of new generation capacity by 2025 (USEA, Modise, 2014). This provides a myriad of sustainability issues when fossil fuel use is well established and renewable energy resource use is in its nascent stages.

Electrification is widely believed to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), based on the assumption that sustainable access to modern energy services fosters economic and social development, and leads to improvements in the quality of life. Yet, particularly in rural Sub Saharan Africa electrification rates are still low, as not far beyond 36 % (as of international study) of the population use electricity. In rural Ethiopia, the electrification rate is even considerably lower. As part of the efforts to achieve the MDGs it is among the national policy priorities of most countries to improve access to electricity – be it via extension of the national grid or decentralized electricity. The national target for Ethiopia, for example, is to augment the overall electrification rate to 90 % by 2015 – a lot times the rate in 1998 E.C. The international donor community joins these efforts and has increased its support to the energy sector in general and electrification projects in particular. As part of these international Endeavours’s, World Bank, Bank of Arab for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), the Kuwait Fund, African Development Bank (AFDB) and bilateral cooperation from development partner countries like Indian Government envisages the sustainable provision of access to modern energy for rural community within the country. Against this background of increasing interestinrural electrification, it is crucial to obtain a more solid basis