BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Jun 2
nd, 2008 at 8:19pm:
It would seem to have, by far, the worlds best solar resources.
Who "seconds" the argument that this is why we haven't seen more development of this technology?
I've spent enough of my life in Africa. There are very few countries in Africa where I would ever consider investing my time again. Ghana is one, and Gabon is another. Almost the entire continent (Sub Saharan Africa) is rife with corruption.
That's its current state, regardless of how it got that way (and that's a whole different story). If you go to Kenya or Guinea or almost any other country in Africa nowadays and compare it with how it was 30 years ago, they have almost all regressed.
Yet if you go back even a couple of centuries, Africa had hope and was relatively disease free.
As far as Solar Power is concerned, we only have to look at the incompetance of the Rudd government in their handling of solar power subsidies to see how badly things can go wrong. Contrast this with Germany where they have a Solar generation scheme that actually works.
The only way you'll get Solar power to work in Africa is to nuke a large section and surround it with security first. The problem is that there is no demand for power in most of Africa, with electricity usage in an entire country being less than a small town in Australia.