Tag Archives: africa

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.

Arm Power to Light Entire Continent

from the bbc

Windup radios already exist and now the company that makes them has created windup light bulbs so people can create their own light!

As part of its LifeLight Project the Freeplay Foundation has drawn up designs for a charging base unit that would be able to power up several detachable lights that can be used around a home.

The Foundation aims to train women to sell and maintain the lights
“They could use them for study or for safety – to help them if they go somewhere at night,” said Ms Pearson.

Working prototypes are now being made that will be tested with families in Kenya to refine the design.

Generic HIV Drugs to Start Production

After much bureaucratic silliness, a generic pharmaceutical company can now begin production of a drug that helps people suffering from HIV/AIDs. Rwanda had to notify of their intention of importing the drug then get approval for the drug to even be manufactured (that’s the simple version). The point is that soon in Rwanda people will be better treated.

Rwanda plans to import 260,000 packs of TriAvir from Canada. The drug is a fixed-dose combination of widely used anti-AIDS drugs lamivudine, zidovudine and nevirapine. The generic product is manufactured in Canada by Apotex Inc.

From the It’s-About-Time-Department

Good things happen every day a zillion times a day, sometimes people get to experience those good things before others. Today I found out about two such things:

1. Women’s rights in Sierra Leone have improved thanks to new laws that protect women. Other countries already have such laws in place and it’s great to see yet another country support equality.

2. Taiwan is going to replace their streetlights with LEDs in a US $7 million initiative to cut power consumption of the lights by 85%. LED streetlights are nothing new, but I have no idea if this is the first time that there has been a LED replacement program that is this big.

Politicians and Scientists Ought to Talk

SciDev.net has an article about how scientists and politicians can help developing nations develop in Africa by highlighting science. By creating policies that support research and development countries will benefit from increased keeping educated labour within their borders and perhaps attracting companies to setup shop in their country.

Bernard Aduda, professor of physics at the University of Nairobi said the move would take S&T to the heart of policy making and raise socioeconomic development to levels comparative with countries in Asia.

“We need the linkage to enable MPs and scientists to work together so that we can mainstream science, technology and innovation issues in the countries’ policy making processes for the socioeconomic benefits of the citizens,” he told SciDev.Net.