Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa

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By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 percent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity. ...No longer do South Africans depend entirely on giant coal-burning plants that have defined how people worldwide got their electricity for more than a century. ...Joel Nana, a project manager with Sustainable Energy Africa, a Cape Town-based organization, called it “a bottom-up movement” to sidestep a generations-old problem... unreliable electricity, expensive electricity or no electricity at all,” ...South Africa was the largest destination for Chinese solar, but not the only one. Sierra Leone imported the equivalent of more than half its total current electricity-generating capacity, and Chad, nearly half. ...Chinese state-owned companies are among several international firms to bid on South Africa’s $25 billion grid expansion, vying to build the lines and then make money, in part, by operating them..... 

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