🔺Year 2030 is supposed to be a year when every person on a planet has electricity. In Africa alone, 580 million people (~40% of population) don’t have electricity. In Ethiopia, approximately 50% of people don’t have electricity.

🔺The topic of “universal energy access” is one of the most popular at international conferences and other events. It seems that this issue keeps more people employed in Brussels and Washington than a population of small African country.

💐Flowery speeches and beautiful presentations on a topic of “universal energy access” hide a simple truth: it is impossible to weight how much electricity for a household is a right amount of electricity.

🌍Ethiopians are using less than 200kWh per year. Europeans are using 7000kWh per year. Americans - 14000kWh. Saudis - 24000kWh.

🔺How many kWh should a household receive in order to be considered to have “energy access”? This is the most important question.

🇮🇳Indian government had once defined “energy access” as 30kWh per household per year (this is good for couple lamps and phone charger), and have reported that most of the country is receiving electricity.

⚡️International Energy Agency considers “energy access” as 50kWh per household per year - extremely little amount - and we see so many international and local government initiatives working to provide that minuscule amount to everyone: solar lamps, lilliputian mini-grids with capacity of 100kWp for villages of 2000 people, etc.

I would think that such projects make more happy people in Brussels (capital of EU) than in the whole Ethiopia.

✳️ What would you prefer:❎ Solar lamp at home and not enough electricity in local health center to power refrigerator and boiler?

❎ Solar lamp at home and not enough electricity to power street lamps in village?

❎ Solar lamp at home but no electricity to power cooler at local shop?

🔺Goal of “Universal energy access” does not make any sense as it should not be a single objective.

🔺It is not enough to have electricity at home. We need electricity at health centers, schools, communication centers, local police stations. It is also crucial to have street lights, to maintain cold logistical chain in retail and in agriculture, etc. etc. etc.

🔺“Universal energy access” should be “Abundant energy access”. Abundant energy gives an opportunity for productive use, and this is the only way to development.

Recent (Nov-22) ambitious document “Roadmap to Mobilize USD 1 Trillion by 2030” by @
Bloomberg Philantropies, World Resource Institute and International Solar Alliance has a wealth of interesting numbers and observations.

🔺One simple chart have caught my attention.

🔺In last 10 years the installed solar capacity in the world have increased 20 times (sic!) - from 40 GW in 2020 to 843 GW in 2021.

🔺At the same time the annual solar investment increased only 2 times - from $91 billion to $205 billion per year.

🔺Why this is important? Solar is becoming cheaper every day (~80% decrease in cost during the same period), so investment to deploy solar generation capacity is less and less every year.

🔺It is great to be different, it is great to be professional, it is great to stand out.

🔺This is so easy in Addis.

🔺Let me teach you. Buy a watch. Or locate clock app on your phone. Even better - install Clock widget on the home screen of your phone.

😎Now you can see what time is it now. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Come to meetings on time, don’t be late, don’t skip meetings.

🧐Plan your route, think about traffic, use your brain or your experience or Google Maps - hope you have one of these.

😇And eternal happiness will embrace you. One way, or another.

@fasil

#ethiopia @10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia

Great poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and lived there until leaving Soviet Union under pressure from government. He was occasionally visiting Moscow - sometimes to see other poets sometimes hiding from KGB. One of such visits lead to beautiful poem.

== Moscow Carol (1962) ==

In such an inexplicable blue,
Upon the stonework to embark,
The little ship of glowing hue
Appears in Alexander Park.

The little lamp, a yellow rose,
Arising -- ready to retreat -
Above the people it adores;
Near strangers' feet.

In such an inexplicable blue
The drunkards' hive, the loonies' team.
A tourist takes a snapshot to
Have left the town and keep no dream.

On the Ordynka street you find
A taxicab with fevered gnomes,
And dead ancestors stand behind
And lean on domes.

A poet strolls across the town
In such an inexplicable blue.
A doorman watches him looking down
And down the street and catches the flu.

An old and handsome cavalier
Moves down a lane not worth a view,
And wedding-party guests appear
In such an inexplicable blue.

Behind the river, in the haar,
As a collection of the blues -
The yellow walls reflecting far
The hopeless accent of the Jews.

You move to Sunday, to despair
(From love), to the New Year, and there
Appears a girl you cannot woo -
Never explaining why she's blue.

Then in the night the town is lost;
A train is clad in silver plush.
The pallid puff, the draught of frost
Will sheathe your face until you blush.

The honeycomb of windows fits
The smell of halva and of zest,
While Christmas Eve is carrying its
Mince pies abreast.

Watch your New Year come in a blue
Seawave across the town terrain
In such an inexplicable blue,
As if your life can start again,
As if there can be bread and light -
A lucky day -- and something's left,
As if your life can sway aright,
Once swayed aleft.

#josephbrodsky

🟣 On 26-27 of January heads of African states, Chairperson of the African Union, President of the African Development Bank Group, have gathered together in Dakar, Senegal for the Food Africa summit.

🔵 Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group: “This is the time to invest in Africa’s future. The continent has more than 60% of the world’s remaining arable land, and millions of Africans are productive in the agriculture sector. With the removal of barriers to agricultural development aided by new investments, it is estimated that Africa’s agricultural output could increase from $280 billion per year to $1 trillion by 2030.”

🟠 At the event African Development Bank have announced planned investment of $10 billion and a further $20 billion by several partners in support of Africa’s agricultural transformation. The International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and several bilateral partners are among international supporters of the summit.

🔵 H.E. Andry Rajoelina, President of the Republic of Madagascar: “On the African continent today, we are facing a war. The war against famine and malnutrition. It is not only weapons, bombs or tanks that kill. Famine and malnutrition kill more people than armed conflict.”

🟡 Needless to say, electrical energy is an essential component of modern agriculture. You cannot grow food without irrigation hence without electricity. You cannot process food without electricity. You cannot have cold storage without electricity.

🔵 H.E. Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal: “The agriculture sector is considered a lame-duck in Africa. We need a shift as Heads of State to prioritize the agriculture sector and farmers.” “We need to inject more resources to upgrade agriculture and change perceptions…We need to find means to give land to women and youth”.

🔺“We need to consume what we produce and produce what we consume. Produce Africa, consume Africa”.

@10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia can help large-scale farmers to build successful, energy abundant farms with solar energy as a primary source of electricity.

🟣 Can Ethiopia learn from Microsoft?

🔄 First of all, we are not that different.

🟢 Ethiopian gross domestic product (adjusted by purchasing power parity, PPP) is $290 billion, Microsoft’s revenue is $198 billion.

🟠 Ethiopia certainly wins on number of people: 120 million inhabitants vs 220 thousand employees of Microsoft.

🔵 Ethiopia’s debt to GDP ratio is 40%, Microsoft’ 90% (and we shouldn’t follow them).

🔆 Recently, Microsoft have announced that it will need at least 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels for its electricity needs. Microsoft’s objective is to receive 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy by 2025.

🟡 If Ethiopia will install 2.5 gigawatt of solar panels, it will replace 100% of dirty and terrible diesel generators, and will become 100% “green” too.

If ⚡️electricity was 🥯 bread…

🇪🇹 Ethiopia has just 14 bakeries for 120 million people. 1/3 of delivery 🚛 trucks are broken, and many people never see any 🥖 bread.

🇪🇹 Ethiopian person on average eats only 120 grams of 🥨 bread every year while an average 🇸🇦Saudi Arabian person eats 24000 grams of bread per year.

It is hard to believe but 🌾 flour for making 🍞bread is completely FREE and ENDLESS. And everyone can build 👨🏿‍🍳 own bakery.

✳️ How much electricity 🇪🇹 Ethiopia needs to develop? Part I.

In July of 2020 Ethiopian government (Planning and Development Position) have presented “10 Years Development Plan 2021-2030”. One can find it online both in Amharic and in English.

🔺This plan aspires to make Ethiopia an “African Beacon of Prosperity”. First of all, by improving income levels and wealth accumulations “so that every citizen would be able to satisfy their basic needs and aspirations” — beautiful and noble objective.

🔺Ten year plan sets ambitious economic goals that cannot be reached without ambitious growth in electricity production.

Let’s focus on 👨🏾‍🌾 agriculture development objectives:

1️⃣ increase in crop production by 1.7 times (including 4.3 times increase in crop production through irrigation)

2️⃣ increase in milk production by 2.7 times

3️⃣ increase in meat production by 5.8 times

4️⃣ increase in egg and chicken meat production by 2 times

5️⃣ increase in fish production by 4.2 times

6️⃣ increase in honey production by 2.5 times

🔺@10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia estimates the amount of new electricity generation that is required to support those objectives as 100-150 MW.

The most cost-effective solution is 🔆 off-grid solar+battery - cheapest energy generation that is built right at the location of energy consumption.

#solarpower #ethiopia #10yearplan

One of the greatest poets of our time Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) was born in Leningrad, USSR. Soviet Union have appreciated his genius in a specific soviet way: in February 1964 he was arrested. In prison he survived a heart attack, then was tortured in “psychiatric ward” and in March of 1964 Brodsky was convicted to 5 years of prison as a “tuneyadets” (person who avoids employment) despite being employed as a writer and translator. Unprecedented international campaign have forced Soviets to free Joseph Brodsky. In June of 1972 his citizenship was revoked and he was pushed out of USSR - literally put on a plane to Vienna, and to global fame.

“I Sit By the Window” (1971)

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you’ve got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on—no need for coke, or grass.

I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn’t often.
I said the forest’s only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you’ve got her knee?

Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won’t be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the floor in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb;
the zero Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn’t math—it was the nothingness of Time.

I sit by the window. And while I sit my youth comes back.
Sometimes I’d smile. Or spit.
I said that the leaf may destroy the bud;
what’s fertile falls in fallow soil—a dud;

that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.

My heavy shadow’s my squat company.
My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one—no one’s legs rest on my shoulders.

I sit by the window in the dark.
Like an express, the waves behind the wave like curtain crash.
A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.

I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.

1️⃣4️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ people cannot be wrong. LinkedIn page of 10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia is home to major news, eloquent comments and thoughtful analysis. And always, always healthy dose of irony.

🔔 Please click on profile picture, go to profile page and click 🔔 in the upper right corner so you will be notified about our great posts 🔔

#ethiopia #solarpower #14000followers

🇿🇦 Cyril Ramaphosa - President of South Africa - have declared “state of disaster” over situation with electricity.

🔲 South Africans have 16+ hours of electricity every day.

👴🏾 My family in Summit condominium area in Addis sometimes has electricity for 6-7 hours a day.

☝🏾We know that 85% of 🇿🇦 South Africans have access to electricity while 🇪🇹 50% of Ethiopians do not.

🫣 Shall our government declare “state of disaster”?

#ethiopia #solarpower #yeswecan 10 Green Gigawatt for Ethiopia

🔺 The most important social media in Ethiopia, according to government.

🔺 Telegram, Facebook, Tik-Tok, YouTube.

#ethiopia #goodtoknow