Renewable energy sources seem will be the answer to Africa’s lighting problem, as a new report by IFC and World Bank indicate that more people in the continent will have access to clean energy by 2015.
The report, Lighting Africa Market Trends Report 2012 – Overview of an the Off-Grid Lighting Market in Africa indicates that 600 million Africans still use the expensive and unreliable sources of lighting such as kerosene.
With this hindsight, the IFC and World Bank launched a programme titled, Lighting Africa to spread the use of solar devices for lighting African homes.
In the last three years this sector for solar lighting gadgets has seen a rise of 300 per cent. This is also fuelled by the fact that bigger corporation such as TOTAL, Panasonic and Energizer are getting into the space.
“IFC and the World Bank are committed to ensuring consumers gain better access to products that meet basic needs. With the price declines in raw materials and solar panels, off-grid lamps are becoming increasingly affordable and within reach for rural households that lack electricity. Lighting Africa on track to reach 250 million people without electricity by 2030,” Itotia Njagi, Lighting Africa’s Program Manager, said.
Current product offerings have benefited from a decline in manufacturing costs while quality has improved with longer battery life, increased brightness and new features such as mobile phone charging and pay-as-you-go options from the current product offering becoming more common, the report denoted.