The social and environmental implications of Africa's rising energy demand.
Africa’s energy development poses fundamental social and environmental challenges. Rapid population growth combined with industrialisation and urbanisation imply large increases in energy demand, much of which is expected to be met by fossil fuels, undermining sustainability goals. Yet increased energy use is critical for the economic development of a continent much of which still has to move away from a dependence on traditional biomass and gain modern levels of access to electricity.
The poor state of electricity infrastructure will retard large-scale electrification, encouraging recourse to off-grid renewables.
Weak infrastructure will also increase the degree to which future energy demand is met by fossil fuels.
Distributed solar and micro-solar use will expand most rapidly where mobile banking has already penetrated.
