Malawi Handing Out Free Drugs

The African country of Malawi is expanding a successful program that gave out free drugs to fight AIDs. The country is founding a new company to make the drugs for their people and to export drugs to their neighbours.

“Some 250,000 Malawians are receiving ARVs. We are doing well because many of these could have died by now,” Mutharika said at an AIDS candlelight memorial on the outskirts of the commercial capital Blantyre.

Describing the drugs roll-out as a “success story”, Mutharika said Malawi would establish a local company to “produce ARVs locally and export extra drugs to neighbouring countries”.

African Sunlight for European Power

Blue chip companies in Germany are looking at using solar energy to power the European markets, the really neat thing is that all the solar energy stations will be in northern Africa. This will help the EU become more efficient with power generation and help the northern African countries with more revenue.

The energy potential in the deserts south of the Mediterranean is enormous.

According to the European Commission’s Institute for Energy, if just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts was captured, it could provide all of Europe’s energy needs.

The Desertec project aims to build solar power plants in several locations in north Africa. Jeworrek said the “most important criteria” was that the locations were “situated in politically stable lands”. Morocco, as well as Libya and Algeria have been cited as potential sites, where land is also cheap.

The technique called “concentrating solar power” or CSP, uses banks of mirrors to focus the sun’s rays in a central column filled with water. The rays heat the water, vaporising the it into a steam which is then used to drive turbines which generate carbon-free electricity.

Thermal Towers in Namibia: Energy and Food

Namibia is examining the feasibility of using solar thermal towers.

Thermal towers work by creating an airflow that spins turbines and the bigger they are the more efficient they become. Namibia appears to be a great place for thermal towers due to the amount of sun it gets. The proposed thermal towers in Namibia will also act as greenhouses for growing food.

A new breed of solar tower may soon be sprouting up in Namibia, providing the nation with a carbon-free source of electricity and food during the day and night. At one and a half kilometers tall and 280 meters wide, these massive solar updraft towers could potentially produce 400MW of energy each – enough to power Windhoek, the nation’s capital. Proposed by intellectual property company Hahn & Hahn, the towers generate energy by forcing heated air through a shaft lined with wind turbines. Additionally, the base of each tower will function as a 37 square km greenhouse where crops can be grown.

Eco Mombassa

Mombassa is going to be home to Kenya’s first eco-city. The spread of the eco-cities is fantastic news because urban living is fun and is becoming more environmentally awesome!

Construction of Kenya’s first eco-city — a residential settlement that is environmentally, socially, economically and culturally self-sustaining — has commenced on the outskirts of Mombasa, with the first phase expected to be ready for occupation by the third quarter of this year.

The whole project will take four to five years to complete.

Going by the name Hacienda, the development, located in the Mwakirunge area of the North Coast, off the Mombas-Malindi highway, will have 6,250 housing units — of two- and three-bedroom flats, and three- and four bedroom bungalows — to be developed in 10 phases.

The plan also includes a hospital, school, playgrounds and recreation facilities, a police station, commercial centres and office blocks, among other vital amenities.

According to Urban Ecology Australia, a non-profit organisation promoting people- and nature-friendly urban settlements, an eco-city is a human settlement that enables its residents to live a quality life while using minimal natural resource

African Desert can Power Europe

There’s a new plan being hatched in North Africa that will see solar panels placed all along the region. The energy produced by the solar farms would then be transfered to Europe using undersea power cables.

Billions of watts of power could be generated this way, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.

Last week Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan presented details of the scheme – named Desertec – to the European Parliament. ‘Countries with deserts, countries with high energy demand, and countries with technology competence must co-operate,’ he told MEPs.

The project has been developed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation and is supported by engineers and politicians in Europe as well as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and other nations in the Middle East and Africa.

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