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jeudi 24 avril 2014

Adopting Sustainable Green Energy In Africa

By Agnes Dickson


Most of energy consumed in Africa is not clean. Starting with the firewood and charcoal use in rural areas, to use of electricity in industries as well as fuels on the roads, all these sources lead to emissions of carbon in the atmosphere. With these emissions, there is increased air pollution, rise in health conditions mostly affecting the chest and also destruction of forests. For this reason, sustainable green energy in Africa needs to be adopted.

Green energy is obtained from all the natural sources such as the sun, wind, geothermal heat, tides, waves and rain. The continent has a lot of these resources as it enjoys sunlight almost throughout the year while its coasts receive substantial amounts of tides, waves and winds yearly. It is therefore a shock that most African nations are not utilizing well these sources.

It is high time that these clean sources completely replace the non renewable sources. Green energy is not renewable, but it is sustainable in the sense that current generation will enjoy using it and so will the future generation. Therefore African nations should make strategies to adopt this clean power sources.

There are a lot of benefits that will result with complete adoption of this sustainable energy. To start the list, it will contribute to poverty reduction. A large number of Africans live below the poverty line and this can be attributed to high unemployment levels. By utilizing solar energy extensively, governments can provide employment opportunities for people. This is because they will now be able to build industries in various parts of the country, improve infrastructure and this will improve economy.

Apart from poverty reduction, environmental pollution will be reduced greatly by this adaptation. Use of charcoal and firewood has lead to increased air pollution in many countries as well as deforestation. The poor quality of air has resulted to increased chest conditions in many people mostly children and women. Drought has also been associated with the diminishing forest cover. With green power, all these problems will be reduced.

When it comes to political stability, most countries will be able to achieve this. It is common occurrence in Africa people fighting for control of particular natural resources such as oil. These fighting have led to the death of many people as well as political instability. But once everyone is able to enjoy the natural accessible energy sources equally, there will be no reason for fighting and thus nations will have peace and thrive economically.

Adjusting to these clean sources of power may be the ultimate goal of many African countries. But the problem arises in the fact that most of these nations cannot afford on their own to finance infrastructure needed for this switch. Also they do not have enough expertise to set up this system and therefore this has seen the benefits of green energy accrued in small domestic scale.

To realize the ultimate goal of the alternative power replacing conventional sources one time, the continent ought to come up with policies that support this. Apart from this, they ought to establish infrastructure for this by seeking various financial options. There should also be nongovernmental organizations set up to carry out research, implementation, and dissemination of information to rural populations as well as lobbying and networking.




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