The Charcoal Project

Human development

Hey, sub-Saharan Africa, feeling energy poor? Take a mobile phone and call me in the morning.

Posted on by Jean Kim Chaix
Suddenly everyone’s looking at the story of mobile phones in Africa as the silver bullet to just about anything.

Is someone selling you counterfeit malaria pills? Let a mobile phone check on that for you. (1)

Too poor to have a bank account? Try mobile banking.(2)

Are you a herder in Kenya or Tanzania and have a sick goat? Track it on a mobile phone. (3)

Someone trying to pull a real estate scam on you in Lagos? Let Google’s Android handle that for you.(4)

Now, the World Bank is wondering if the mobile phone story may be the ticket out of energy poverty for rural sub-Saharan Africa.

Continue reading→

Can The Hartwell Paper bring biomass & energy efficiency out of the development wilderness?

Posted on by Jean Kim Chaix

OPINION I almost cut myself shaving this morning while listening to a BBC News story about The Hartwell Paper, which I’d only heard about en passant. The Hartwell Paper was drafted by a group of academics in an attempt to offer a radically different way of framing the issues raised by climate change, and hence a different set of approaches for tackling them. I’m writing about this now because, if the ideas put forward gain traction, they have the potential to place energy poverty and unsustainable biomass dependence where it belongs: out of the sustainable development wilderness and into the Continue reading→

UN report Energy for a Sustainable Future is pie in the sky

Posted on by Jean Kim Chaix

OPINION – Do the energy poor, especially those who depend on biomass for their primary fuel have to wait until electricity magically arrives in their home before they can get rid of their three-rocks-and-pot that is killing their children, mother, and wives?

This question was actually bravely posed at the UN last week in a closed door Q&A session held after the release of a report called Energy for a Sustainable Future.

The response given was, literally,”nothing.” Nothing is being done for the energy poor until electricity arrives.

Continue reading→

MDB: Civil Society Calls on World Bank to Reform its Energy Lending

Posted on by Jean Kim Chaix

By Matthew Berger / WASHINGTON, Apr 26, 2010 (IPS). Against the backdrop of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings this weekend, numerous groups have chimed in on the need for and direction of a new World Bank energy strategy.  (…) The new energy strategy will try to bridge the dangerous gap between increasing energy access and not exacerbating the effects of climate change. As such, energy likely represents one of the most contentious areas of the bank’s lending policy.

Continue reading→