According to Adnan Amin, the director general of IRENA, ''Africa's solar potential is enormous'' he said in an interview with Thompson Reuters foundation. The continent gets 117 percent more sunshine than Germany which today has the highest installed solar panel capacity. Africa’s vast solar potential presents a huge opportunity for people to engage in a range of economic activities such as irrigation and agro-processing, and it is already beginning to happen,” said the Nairobi- born Amin.
MORE INNOVATION, LESS COST
Solar can have high upfront costs, compared to traditional fuels, but a number of technological and financing advances such as pay-as-you-go solar, with payments made by mobile phone are helping deal with that problem, Even the higher initial costs are coming down, with solar panel prices expected to continue falling. The price of producing power from solar mini-grids – installations unconnected to larger national grid systems – is expected to fall by at least 60 percent over the next two decades.“The rapid rise of pay-as-you-go solar home systems and integration with mobile payment technology is an example of the speed of innovation that is taking place. In East Africa alone, over 450,000 such systems have been deployed,” he said.IRENA estimates that up to 60 million Africans already may be using off-grid renewable electricity of some kind.
