The robot, unemployment and immigrants

Access to electricity is a key factor for the future of the African continent. Energy poverty and lack of universal access to electricity services are, in fact, remarkably hurting human progress in Africa. Today, sub-Saharan Africa hosts 14 percent of the world’s population but 60 percent of the world’s people without access to electricity: of the more than 1 billion people globally who had no access to electricity, around 600 million lived in the region. In these conditions, many African countries are unable to develop a solid economy or provide basic health and education services to their citizens. The conference - starting from the analysis of present and future economic, demographic, social and technological trends presented in the volume Empowering Africa - will offer an assessment of the current status and of the future prospects of access to electricity in the African continent.

A civil society report released in late October criticised the World Bank for its failure to commit more resources to energy access, arguing that its approach to energy investment does not do enough to end energy poverty in developing regions.

However, the Funding Clean Energy Access for the Poor report argued the Bank needs to take additional steps to prioritise energy access over investments in energy for export, particularly in energy poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, in order to help reach SEforAll goals.

An October report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based intergovernmental organisation, has shown that investment in distributed renewable energy technology, including off-grid and mini-grid electricity in remote rural areas of developing countries, is essential for meeting SEforAll’s goal of achieving universal energy access.

To reach universal access by 2030, the IEA report suggested that 90 per cent of the remaining 700 million connections would need to be provided by renewable technology, with off-grid and mini-grid technology playing a key role in energy poor countries with limited conventional grids.