The Problem
Universal energy access alleviates poverty and ensures sustainable and inclusive economic growth
Understanding that, we saw our work as an agent for positive potential social transformation. Thus, we decided to focus on the region that has the least energy access and society is most severely impacted: sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
This totaled 570 million people in 2019. The causes for the lack of energy access in SSA are both on the supply and demand side. From the demand perspective, the main constraints are the low uptake and regressive connection charges, factors that are also correlated. From the supply perspective, one of the issues is the unreliability of renewable sources (which can be addressed by flexibly controlling storage according to demand and production capacity), causing common blackouts and brownouts.
75% of the world's population without energy access live in SSA
Those barriers to electricity access hinder the progress toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Such as Goal 7 (“Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all”), Goal 5: Gender Equality, and also the remaining 15 goals as they impose issues on a national and an individual scale, such as disconnecting SSA residents from the globalized world, preventing economic development, decreasing the quality of public health and worsening urban mobility.
By the numbers
25%
of the entire installed production capacity (just 68 gigawatts) is unavailable due to aging plants and poor maintenance
1%
is the per capita consumption of electricity compared to high-income countries – not even enough to power one light bulb per person for six hours a day if dedicated entirely to household lighting!
83%
of SSA residents without electricity live in rural areas