President Obama Commits to Solar Power Investments

President Obama discusses about solar power to the audience during a stop in Nevada. Solar power will be part of a new initiative to bring electricity to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

          Along with more than $9 billion in private investments, the United States will be committing more than $7 billion in the next five years towards bringing electricity to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, President Obama had said on Sunday in South Africa. "Access to electricity is fundamental to opportunity in this age," Obama said in announcing the solar initiative, known as Power Africa. "It's the light that children study by, the energy that allows an idea to be transformed into a real business. It's the lifeline for families to meet their most basic needs. And it's the connection that's needed to plug Africa into the grid of the global economy."
        Sub-Saharan Africa compromises 48 nations. Among the countries to be targeted initially are Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. "These countries have set ambitious goals in electric power generation and are making the utility and energy sector reforms to pave the way for investment and growth," the White House said. The more than $7 billion in United States investment will include up to $5 billion in support from the United States Export-Import Bank.
       "More than two-thirds of the residents of sub-Saharan Africa lack access to power," the president said. "In rural areas of the region, more than 85% of people don't have electricity. Power Africa will deliver electricity to cities, villages, and farms throughout sub-Saharan Africa." According to the International Energy Agency, sub-Saharan Africa will need more than $300 billion in investment to provide power for everyone by 2030. "Power Africa will supply electricity to at least 20 million households and businesses," the White House said.

Solar-Powered Computers for Off-Grid Schools

      In 2009, a 19-year-old graduating senior from Hong Kong's International School, Charles Watson, carrying a rudimentary computer, had took off a year from entering a university to travel to Nepal to work on a project he came up with while still in school: to provide off-the-grid schools with solar-linked computing power. "Once I got to Nepal, I was running a blog, taking photos and so on, saying 'We need computers,'" he says. "I did a fundraising run in Nepal and that raised enough to buy 30 computers at $300 each - $10,000 if you include the solar panels."
      Watson, an American who has be raised in Hong Kong, is currently 23 and still is not attending a university, despite being accepted at the University of Illinois, and doesn't plan on attending any time in the foreseeable future. Instead, he is the founder and chief of SolarLEAP, a nonprofit organization company whose computers are often assembled by his parents at their kitchen table, but they are delivering computing power to schools without reliable electricity, or none at all, in countries as diverse as Nepal, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and, he hopes, across the world.
       "As many as 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world's population, remain without access to electricity," he says. Ten countries--four in developing Asia and six in sub-Saharan Africa--account for two-thirds of those without electricity. Unless further action is taken, it is projected that close to one billion people will be without electricity still in 2030.

Charles Watson and friends

        Watson has since branched out to Ghana, where he has installed 24 computers, each running on solar power in off-grid schools. After the projects in Nepal and Ghana were completed, demand in rural communities began to grow. Within weeks, organizations in India and Ethiopia were looking for unique low-power consumption computers to run in schools without electricity. Furthermore, Watson was looking for a way to continue the work without his direct, on-the-ground involvement, and thus SolarLEAP was born.
        Today, he has installed 200 of solar-powered computers in five countries with funding from non-governmental organizations and anybody he can solicit money from. "The transformation of schools is dramatic," he says. In 2010, after installation of his computers in Canumay School near Antipolo in the Philippines, the school moved from last place to a first ranking in its school district. He provided the first solar-powered computers to any school in India. "One in four people around the globe don't have access to electricity," he said. "More than 100 million children don't have access to education and a large share of students fortunate enough to be in school don't have access to quality education materials."