LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES:

Africa has the potential to become a renewable powerhouse.  

With much of it bathed in sunlight year-round, the continent has 60% of the world's best solar resources. And it has enough wind potential in a year to meet its electricity demand 250 times over, with resources stretching all the way from Algeria to South Africa.  

Countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia already cover more than 80% of their consumption with hydropower -- but there is room to produce even more across the continent. Meanwhile, Kenya is a world leader in harnessing geothermal energy.  

Though the use of clean power varies greatly across Africa, the continent as a whole still gets almost all of its energy from fossil fuels. As half of the population in sub-Saharan Africa doesn't have access to electricity, there are hundreds of millions of customers waiting to enter the market.

Other continents electrified off the back of coal, oil, and gas and, to different extents, are now trying to transition to renewables. Could Africa skip fossil fuels and service new consumers with green energy?  

"What makes Africa the right continent to roll out those [green] technologies is the simple fact that they are there in abundance," said Tony Tiyou, CEO of the engineering consultancy Renewables in Africa that works in Kenya, Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria, and Benin. "I call it the promised land."

For people living in Africa, leapfrogging to clean power has one very clear benefit: Mitigating the climate crisis, because they have felt the effects of burning fossil fuels first-hand. This process releases greenhouse gases that heat the atmosphere, which makes extreme weather events more likely and more severe. 

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