With unity, cooperation, Africa has enough high-quality solar to power the entire world

While attending the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earlier this year, economist Jeffrey David Sachs delivered a message filled with Pan-African themes and encouraged African leaders to “unite or fall.” He argued that a unified African continent could emulate China’s rapid 40-year economic transformation through strategic planning, green industrialization, and continental unity.

Dr. Sachs, who frequently appears on international media outlets, heavily criticizing mainstream Western news organizations and their biased, one-sided reporting, is an economist and public policy analyst, a professor at Columbia University, and the current director of the Center for Sustainable Development.

At the February summit, he warned that Africa must integrate its markets and become a singular geopolitical bloc. He stressed that Europeans and American colonial-era divisions leave the continent’s 55 countries fragmented and vulnerable, while a true union or integration of African nation-states unlocks the scale needed to compete and excel.

Integrating the trajectory of Africa’s population growth with “the most amazing acceleration of technological know-how in history,” Dr. Sachs projects that Africa’s population is so young that there is a tremendous population growth built into Africa till the end of the century. He calculates that “Africa’s population will be two and a half billion people at mid-century.”

Comparing Africa’s population growth to that of China and India, he said that by the end of the 21st century, China’s population will be under one billion, and India’s, he estimates, will stabilize at 1.7 billion. Dr. Sachs explained that according to him, “on the current extrapolation with a gradually declining fertility rate, Africa reaches about 3.7 billion people by the end of the 21st century, and that is about 35% (or one-third) of the world population.”

Everything has accelerated, he explained. “If you launch ChatGPT one month, within the next month there are 100 million users. Within six months, there are 500 million users. We’ve never had an uptake of technology at this speed in history. So, if this technological know-how is properly utilized, the ability of Africa to achieve what China achieved, double-digit growth for four decades, is absolutely realistic. This is the main point. Africa can achieve a dramatic advance,” he argued.

The entire African continent must be in learning mode, he pointed out. “This is a continent with a 19-year median age. Half the children are at school age. I mean half the population is at school age in this continent. Make sure they’re learning and then you transform your dreams into reality,” Dr. Sachs said.

Africa needs investment. “The most important (investment), every child on this continent should complete at least upper and secondary school with real learning,” he continued. Dr. Sachs explained that the continent as a unified body needs to “figure out how to do that.”

He also spoke on how electronic devices and technology can help in that effort, including having some classes online.

“It’s virtually free to do this. If you actually work out the capital costs, there should be no limits of teachers in rural areas or teachers that are under-qualified, or can’t do a math problem because we don’t need the traditional delivery as the only delivery of education right now. We’re in a digital world. You can leapfrog. Be creative. Be inventive. But take the basic idea. Don’t let the budget constraint stand in the way of universal quality education. It’s by far the number one resource of this continent and it’s growing very rapidly, and there is no demographic dividend of a young population if it is not educated. None at all. Only a burden,” he argued.

Another major investment is physical infrastructure. “That includes developing the power sector, the transport sector, the digital sector, social housing, water and sanitation, the key infrastructure. There needs to be an Africa-wide strategy that reaches down to every part of the continent,” he argued.

Dr. Sachs encouraged the energy or power sector to tap Africa’s wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal potential. “This continent has enough high-quality solar to power the entire world. As you know, we’ve all seen the ‘little box’ in the Sahara that has enough solar energy to power the entire world,” he said, referring to the Sahara Desert.

According to several published reports, the potential is limitless.

In a 2021 article in Forbes.com titled, “We Could Power The Entire World By Harnessing Solar Energy From 1% Of The Sahara,” it stated in part, “The Great Saharan Desert in Africa is 3.6 million square miles and is prime for solar power (more than 12 hours per day). That means 1.2% of the Sahara Desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy. There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal or nuclear can compete with this.”

The Sahara receives roughly enough sunlight in six hours to power on all of human civilization, for at least an entire year. Theoretically, this “box,” covering just 11.5 miles by 11.5 miles with high-efficiency solar panels, could meet the entire world’s electricity demand.

What will it take for Africa to achieve this kind of dynamism? According to Dr. Sachs, “Basically, be like China or be like India, unified, integrated structure, working on a continental scale economy with a continental scale policy and plan.”

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