Both authoritarianism (Museveni, Moi) and state planning (Nyerere) have been tried without much success. So the political system is not the problem. The problems are deeper and are tied to cohesion, habits of cooperation and ultimately the capability of the group (as opposed to the individual). These problems will be resolved eventually, so we must hope it is sooner rather than later.
I was WB Director for Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde (2000-04); and for Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi (2007-11) having worked in Africa from 1977-1989 as a researcher. I believe what you write about lack of ambition and lack of long-term planning is true. Let me give some examples. Indian PM Singh once visited Ethiopia and Tanzania. Some members of Singh’s team expressed astonishment at the contrast between Ethiopia and Tanzania. In Ethiopia, the locals prepared the visit exhaustively — plans for projects, investments, partnerships, logistics of the investments, costings—and the Indian delegation was impressed. The Tanzanians basically said “ Oh you’re here; what would you like to see ?” The Indian delegation was not impressed. In Senegal (and in Gambia and in Guinea Bissau and in Burundi and in Cote dÍvoire) there was national variants on a main theme; an erratic head of state (eg, Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal) flipping from one imaginary unrealistic project to the next and never getting anything done. In all those countries I was approached by foreign investors (public and private) who asked pointed questions about the business environment; my answer was always — “You should be asking the local officials and private bankers”; to which the potential investors replied “ We get the run around or we get obvious lies (about project variability, land acquisition, financing, etc). [This indolence works both ways; the contrast between the Norwegian fossil fuels team in Tanzania (informed, organized) and the Brits (acted as if they still owned the place)] The advisors around Ministers, PMs, and Heads of State tended to have no idea what to do (I had many meetings with senior officials where their advisors would accost me in panic outside the boss’s door just before the meeting to say; “ can you give me a brief so I know what to say to my chief ? “ The WB Chief Economist, Justin Lin, visited Tanzania in 2011 and we met Pres Kikwete. Lin’s purpose was to tell JK — China is losing > 40 m jobs because rising wages make some industries uncompetitive; those jobs will go elsewhere; many could come here to Tanzania; and we could work with you on planning for them to come here because your country’s location and labor force give it great export potential. Kikwete and his chief economic adviser, Elsie Kanza, nodded politely and did nothing. Etc etc etc. All this, by the way, is one reason to support Tidjane Thiam for President of Cote d’Ívoire because I think he would have a serious long-term vision and realistic ideas on how to realize that vision.
Despite her general incompetence as a WB VP, Obi Ezekweseli was brutally honest and absolutely right on one big thing: “Stop complaining about the foreigners or imperialism or the IMF or whatever ; if we have problems in Africa let us fix them ourselves “
My last trip to Nigeria was 2013. We visited some markets up the road from Ibadan. Seeing the difficulty of the lives of ordinary people, I wondered how the government survived a week without being burnt to the ground.
It is interesting to read articles like yours because I am always reminded of the proverbial blind men trying to identify an elephant. One day I will get around to taxonomizing Pan-African thought, and I will dutifully place you somewhere among one of the categories.
You are relentlessly barking up the wrong tree. Explanations for our plight and misery such as "the elites lack ambition" yield no explanation whatsoever and ignore the obvious. Stop yearning for some kind of easy solution. What is ambition anyway? An emotion, a mindset at best. Easily afforded, especially for the elites. This would indeed be the easiest solutions of all.
Of course they lack ambition. The obvious follow-up question is "why then do they lack ambition?" And so on in a reductionist manner as far as you have the patience to stomach. What is the ambition of the management of a prison other than orderliness in the prison? In other words, what is their sanctioned ambition? Do you see it yet?
The elephant, of course, is imperialism, pure and simple. Super-imperialism in Michael Hudson's words. Like many African countries, Kenya is not truly an independent country - not where it counts anyway. This singular fact yields answers to all your questions and insight into the many contradictions of our society. Brimming with beautiful people, talent, and natural resources, yet with net negative production and an extremely narrow economy. A country where 99.9% of the youth are only here for lack of a visa, prisoners for the most part. The little capital we can afford not being directed towards a happy marriage with plentiful labor and even more plentiful land, but towards a bitter marriage with rentier capitalism.
Those among my peers, the younger millenials and older Gen-Z, who have found themselves fortunately in possession of some small capital, have looked around at the dismal state of affairs here and invested it outside. Land is an overcrowded trade, and the older generations want a fortune to forfeit it. Better to wait to inherit it. The stock market sits primly in the rentier landscape, charging 2% for each transaction, and is no more attractive. Banks would no sooner lend to you than to a street dog. And even if they did lend to you, what venture will outrun 20% interest? Who can blame them when that little capital is instead directed at crypto or the NYSE?
If the budding youth cannot find reason to invest here, why would the elites? In any case, the Panama papers told us all we needed to know about the elites. They do exactly what Western elites do, which makes perfect sense. They are subservient to Western technocracy through and through. They are barely Kenyan.
If we had any measure of independence, we long ago lost it to debt entrapment and subservience to Western technocracy. Persistent net negative production is slavery by definition. How is it that Kenya has sustained a twin deficit virtually since independence? How is it mathematically possible? Even the US is not immune to the effects of such a reckless debt binge, as crises in recent decades revealed - and they have dollar seigniorage to say the least.
In purely economic terms, what is Kenya? At once a colonial extractive economy and a lucrative market for import-oriented merchants - with little to no competition from local production. In a word, a slave economy. We export labor and raw materials on the cheap, import everything, and borrow where we fall short. And we always fall short - since "independence" in fact. Since that first CBK governor who was literally from the IMF, and each subsequent ex-IMF governor through the decades.
In such an environment, why would anyone invest in any kind of production of anything at all? Thinking of any kind of productive investment here is like thinking of jumping across a ditch with sharp spikes pointed up at you. You might make it, against all odds, but no sane person would do it. Take the easy road instead. Import stuff. Consume. The forex reserve is the true financial wealth of the country. The masses of the poor and predatory creditors refill it, while the elites drink from it. Use it before your brother depletes it, for it will surely be irredeemably depleted some day. Punda atachoka, and the creditors are coldly rational investors. Loan sharks do have an actual enterprise to run at the end of the day, after all. They have to balance the books like any business.
What it will take to get out of this is true independence and freedom. It was naive to imagine that once we had the land, we had the sovereignty. A country is not simply its landmass. That's just global apartheid with natural, national demarcation - something just short of a classical colony. Raw materials and the fruits of cheap labor out, goods in. A slave's household. As any casual reading into these matter will show anyone, the debt entrapment is deliberate and strategic.
This is a very Marxist view (highly determinist and assigning no agency to the actors), and doesn't take into account a longer history. The societies that make up Kenya have existed there for hundreds, even thousands of years. The colonial age in East Africa lasted for not quite a human lifetime, during which time entire states were constructed with very limited resources and tiny budgets. Colonialism lasted far longer in India, was more comprehensive in the Americas, and was more destructive in Southeast Asia (Vietnam and Laos being examples).
There is little fundamentally wrong with most of the colonial East African states (not by size, population, or basic institutions bequeathed). Their survival largely proves this. What is required is a population (not just a leadership) who do not assign blame or responsibility to others, but take ownership of the situation themselves.
Consider the graph of energy output for Kenya and Vietnam. One might reject comparisons between Kenya and South Korea, but Kenya vs Vietnam is altogether harder to reject. Responsible people would accept they are out of excuses. The average Arab, South Asian, South East Asian has better prospects because, despite similar post-colonial constraints, they have taken giant strides to resolve their developmental problems.
One has identified key problems (e.g. twin deficits) and issues of commercial behaviours clearly, so I find it a stretch to assign what are very local and personal problems to international actors. Kenya's elite are very much a product of their society, not international actors.
I am familiar with this school of thought, it amounts to "be collectively more virtuous, it will work out". Which can be said of any society at any time, and everyone suddenly being marginally more virtuous somehow sounds alright in principle. But it's purely an appeal so some abstract virtue. Reasonable enough, Christ himself was all about virtue.
What I've described is simply things as they are, I'm not "assigning what are very local and personal problems to international actors". What does that mean? That I am factually incorrect? That I'm offloading responsibility of any sort to someone else? Maybe both?
You are correct in spirit. Being collectively more virtuous is part of the mix, but a lot more too. To start with, a "concrete analysis of the concrete conditions", as Lenin said. Now that's something actually Marxist, but it's wholly dispensable. It sounds like a reasonable thing to do in any scenario, it's not really a revelation.
The author of the post above talks about "being agentic" as a property of an individual. But when agentic individuals befriend one another and collaborate, they become agentic organizations. With enough powerful agentic organizations, you get an agentic society.
See, for example, this book, which discusses South Korea's development, and the ambition, drive, and self-sacrifice which was required to get the country where it is today:
I would submit that most developed countries went through a high-agency period to get where they are today. Read about successful countries, organizations, and individuals in order to learn specific things which worked for them, beyond just an abstract idea to "be virtuous". Find like-minded individuals, partner with them, share your learnings, and set gradually more ambitious goals for yourselves.
Garvey 101, Ebenezer. Have you ever listened to any Bob Marley song?
The history of African people is full of martyrs nailed on the cross of "being agentic", so we are quite familiar with sacrifice, ambition, and drive. I'm sure you've heard of all the assassinations, torture, etc.
The United States has many problems, like narcotics, obesity, and homelessness. Is one to assume that, based on that, individuals and groups in this society have a problem with "finding like-minded individuals, partnering with them, sharing their learnings, and setting gradually more ambitious goals for themselves"? It's plausible. Sounds like something that could happen. It could be framed that way.
Like I said, you're correct in spirit. A great deal of organizing things needs to happen. In fact, the genesis of our problems is that we never really did this. No one actually organized and planned a civilization called "Kenya" except the erstwhile empire. Not in coherent economic terms anyway. All the hard work that goes into that was skipped.
So of course at some point we each have to reach into our hearts, gather our virtues, and collectively be more Christ-like in the name of building a country.
Totally agree with the tourism-as-revisiting-the-colonial-experience discussion. Since day one, Kenya has marketed the hollywood idea of a safari --- to the benefit of the khaki-clad mzungu operators who sell nostalgia. Jet setters in Maasai Mara luxury camps, around 5 star meals with French wines served by African waiters in fez caps, shuka-clad Maasai standing guard near the camp fire.
But I do agree with Kenya's green energy plans. As you pointed out, growth in generation is driven by demand, not policy papers, and post-COVID Kenya had to cancel power projects because Kenya Power didn't have enough demand to sell its expensive power. Coal power plants wouldn't solve that one. Believe it or not, about 400 MW of solar (10% of the installed capacity) has been installed by industry on their side of the meters in the past 4 years because C&I solar players deliver power at a lower cost than KPLC. The trend to self supply will continue as lithium battery costs continue to drop (50% in the last 18 months). Electric mobility is going to be a key piece of electricity demand stimulation. E-boda-boda's are everywhere as are e-buses -- because they are cost effective.
In a system like Kenya’s—where appointments are driven by coalition maintenance rather than execution—what does it realistically take to break free from being hostage elite-driven patronage politics that you described?
The deterioration of performance culture to performance theater culture is a huge issue...
Can a leader with enough political capital carve out islands of excellence by empowering high-performing technocrats? Or does it usually take a major crisis, like Indonesia’s post-1997 Asian Financial Crisis reforms, to force real governance change?
Is the hope to wait for a debt default to drive change?
It seems like the lack of energy generation and lack of electricity demand from industrial customers are a rock and a hard place between which it's hard to become unstuck. Would it be useful for the state to stand up or subsidize some industrial firms in sectors that needn't be models of rigorous efficiency so they can be "anchor tenant" customers of new coal and gas plants until entrepreneurs can devise cleverer ways of taking advantage of surplus power? Such as steel mills? Maybe as urban bus fleets turn over some of them can turn to electric buses and economize on the country's fuel import bill somewhat. Perhaps electric motorcycles and other EVs will also become attractive alternatives to ICE models and can therefore also make use of electrical supply slack. Hospitals, internet service providers, households, telecom, data centers, mines, construction are usually thirsty for electricity and probably provide some upward elasticity of demand. Grid batteries, too, can soak up excess as they do for solar power. Great article, Dr Opalo
Would it be helpful for donors or states to use Mem Rise and other popular language learning software and podcasts to try to expand English in partially anglophone countries like Nigeria and Kenya, as well as French, Portuguese, and Arabic in the countries where those languages are widely but not universally spoken?
The only ambitious leader I see on the African continent is Paul Kagame. That is why I never ever listen to his detractors. If Nigerian leaders were half the man that Kagame was, then things will move very fast in the right direction
Might part of the problem is the tendency of elites educated in Western liberalism to criticise anything that involves planning as “authoritarianism”.
Both authoritarianism (Museveni, Moi) and state planning (Nyerere) have been tried without much success. So the political system is not the problem. The problems are deeper and are tied to cohesion, habits of cooperation and ultimately the capability of the group (as opposed to the individual). These problems will be resolved eventually, so we must hope it is sooner rather than later.
I was WB Director for Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde (2000-04); and for Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi (2007-11) having worked in Africa from 1977-1989 as a researcher. I believe what you write about lack of ambition and lack of long-term planning is true. Let me give some examples. Indian PM Singh once visited Ethiopia and Tanzania. Some members of Singh’s team expressed astonishment at the contrast between Ethiopia and Tanzania. In Ethiopia, the locals prepared the visit exhaustively — plans for projects, investments, partnerships, logistics of the investments, costings—and the Indian delegation was impressed. The Tanzanians basically said “ Oh you’re here; what would you like to see ?” The Indian delegation was not impressed. In Senegal (and in Gambia and in Guinea Bissau and in Burundi and in Cote dÍvoire) there was national variants on a main theme; an erratic head of state (eg, Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal) flipping from one imaginary unrealistic project to the next and never getting anything done. In all those countries I was approached by foreign investors (public and private) who asked pointed questions about the business environment; my answer was always — “You should be asking the local officials and private bankers”; to which the potential investors replied “ We get the run around or we get obvious lies (about project variability, land acquisition, financing, etc). [This indolence works both ways; the contrast between the Norwegian fossil fuels team in Tanzania (informed, organized) and the Brits (acted as if they still owned the place)] The advisors around Ministers, PMs, and Heads of State tended to have no idea what to do (I had many meetings with senior officials where their advisors would accost me in panic outside the boss’s door just before the meeting to say; “ can you give me a brief so I know what to say to my chief ? “ The WB Chief Economist, Justin Lin, visited Tanzania in 2011 and we met Pres Kikwete. Lin’s purpose was to tell JK — China is losing > 40 m jobs because rising wages make some industries uncompetitive; those jobs will go elsewhere; many could come here to Tanzania; and we could work with you on planning for them to come here because your country’s location and labor force give it great export potential. Kikwete and his chief economic adviser, Elsie Kanza, nodded politely and did nothing. Etc etc etc. All this, by the way, is one reason to support Tidjane Thiam for President of Cote d’Ívoire because I think he would have a serious long-term vision and realistic ideas on how to realize that vision.
Despite her general incompetence as a WB VP, Obi Ezekweseli was brutally honest and absolutely right on one big thing: “Stop complaining about the foreigners or imperialism or the IMF or whatever ; if we have problems in Africa let us fix them ourselves “
Man, I would like to hear your views on my country, Nigeria. Do not mince words
Talented hard working people full of genius energy and charm.
rotten corrupt governments are thr problem
A great tragedy.
My last trip to Nigeria was 2013. We visited some markets up the road from Ibadan. Seeing the difficulty of the lives of ordinary people, I wondered how the government survived a week without being burnt to the ground.
It is interesting to read articles like yours because I am always reminded of the proverbial blind men trying to identify an elephant. One day I will get around to taxonomizing Pan-African thought, and I will dutifully place you somewhere among one of the categories.
You are relentlessly barking up the wrong tree. Explanations for our plight and misery such as "the elites lack ambition" yield no explanation whatsoever and ignore the obvious. Stop yearning for some kind of easy solution. What is ambition anyway? An emotion, a mindset at best. Easily afforded, especially for the elites. This would indeed be the easiest solutions of all.
Of course they lack ambition. The obvious follow-up question is "why then do they lack ambition?" And so on in a reductionist manner as far as you have the patience to stomach. What is the ambition of the management of a prison other than orderliness in the prison? In other words, what is their sanctioned ambition? Do you see it yet?
The elephant, of course, is imperialism, pure and simple. Super-imperialism in Michael Hudson's words. Like many African countries, Kenya is not truly an independent country - not where it counts anyway. This singular fact yields answers to all your questions and insight into the many contradictions of our society. Brimming with beautiful people, talent, and natural resources, yet with net negative production and an extremely narrow economy. A country where 99.9% of the youth are only here for lack of a visa, prisoners for the most part. The little capital we can afford not being directed towards a happy marriage with plentiful labor and even more plentiful land, but towards a bitter marriage with rentier capitalism.
Those among my peers, the younger millenials and older Gen-Z, who have found themselves fortunately in possession of some small capital, have looked around at the dismal state of affairs here and invested it outside. Land is an overcrowded trade, and the older generations want a fortune to forfeit it. Better to wait to inherit it. The stock market sits primly in the rentier landscape, charging 2% for each transaction, and is no more attractive. Banks would no sooner lend to you than to a street dog. And even if they did lend to you, what venture will outrun 20% interest? Who can blame them when that little capital is instead directed at crypto or the NYSE?
If the budding youth cannot find reason to invest here, why would the elites? In any case, the Panama papers told us all we needed to know about the elites. They do exactly what Western elites do, which makes perfect sense. They are subservient to Western technocracy through and through. They are barely Kenyan.
If we had any measure of independence, we long ago lost it to debt entrapment and subservience to Western technocracy. Persistent net negative production is slavery by definition. How is it that Kenya has sustained a twin deficit virtually since independence? How is it mathematically possible? Even the US is not immune to the effects of such a reckless debt binge, as crises in recent decades revealed - and they have dollar seigniorage to say the least.
In purely economic terms, what is Kenya? At once a colonial extractive economy and a lucrative market for import-oriented merchants - with little to no competition from local production. In a word, a slave economy. We export labor and raw materials on the cheap, import everything, and borrow where we fall short. And we always fall short - since "independence" in fact. Since that first CBK governor who was literally from the IMF, and each subsequent ex-IMF governor through the decades.
In such an environment, why would anyone invest in any kind of production of anything at all? Thinking of any kind of productive investment here is like thinking of jumping across a ditch with sharp spikes pointed up at you. You might make it, against all odds, but no sane person would do it. Take the easy road instead. Import stuff. Consume. The forex reserve is the true financial wealth of the country. The masses of the poor and predatory creditors refill it, while the elites drink from it. Use it before your brother depletes it, for it will surely be irredeemably depleted some day. Punda atachoka, and the creditors are coldly rational investors. Loan sharks do have an actual enterprise to run at the end of the day, after all. They have to balance the books like any business.
What it will take to get out of this is true independence and freedom. It was naive to imagine that once we had the land, we had the sovereignty. A country is not simply its landmass. That's just global apartheid with natural, national demarcation - something just short of a classical colony. Raw materials and the fruits of cheap labor out, goods in. A slave's household. As any casual reading into these matter will show anyone, the debt entrapment is deliberate and strategic.
This is a very Marxist view (highly determinist and assigning no agency to the actors), and doesn't take into account a longer history. The societies that make up Kenya have existed there for hundreds, even thousands of years. The colonial age in East Africa lasted for not quite a human lifetime, during which time entire states were constructed with very limited resources and tiny budgets. Colonialism lasted far longer in India, was more comprehensive in the Americas, and was more destructive in Southeast Asia (Vietnam and Laos being examples).
There is little fundamentally wrong with most of the colonial East African states (not by size, population, or basic institutions bequeathed). Their survival largely proves this. What is required is a population (not just a leadership) who do not assign blame or responsibility to others, but take ownership of the situation themselves.
Consider the graph of energy output for Kenya and Vietnam. One might reject comparisons between Kenya and South Korea, but Kenya vs Vietnam is altogether harder to reject. Responsible people would accept they are out of excuses. The average Arab, South Asian, South East Asian has better prospects because, despite similar post-colonial constraints, they have taken giant strides to resolve their developmental problems.
One has identified key problems (e.g. twin deficits) and issues of commercial behaviours clearly, so I find it a stretch to assign what are very local and personal problems to international actors. Kenya's elite are very much a product of their society, not international actors.
I'm Nigerian. I agree 100%
I am familiar with this school of thought, it amounts to "be collectively more virtuous, it will work out". Which can be said of any society at any time, and everyone suddenly being marginally more virtuous somehow sounds alright in principle. But it's purely an appeal so some abstract virtue. Reasonable enough, Christ himself was all about virtue.
What I've described is simply things as they are, I'm not "assigning what are very local and personal problems to international actors". What does that mean? That I am factually incorrect? That I'm offloading responsibility of any sort to someone else? Maybe both?
You are correct in spirit. Being collectively more virtuous is part of the mix, but a lot more too. To start with, a "concrete analysis of the concrete conditions", as Lenin said. Now that's something actually Marxist, but it's wholly dispensable. It sounds like a reasonable thing to do in any scenario, it's not really a revelation.
If you find "be more virtuous" to be overly abstract, here's a substack post with a bunch of concrete tips:
https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic
The author of the post above talks about "being agentic" as a property of an individual. But when agentic individuals befriend one another and collaborate, they become agentic organizations. With enough powerful agentic organizations, you get an agentic society.
See, for example, this book, which discusses South Korea's development, and the ambition, drive, and self-sacrifice which was required to get the country where it is today:
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596915986/
Or here is a related blog post about how much agency the US had during its development period:
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/03/30/a-school-of-strength-and-character/
I would submit that most developed countries went through a high-agency period to get where they are today. Read about successful countries, organizations, and individuals in order to learn specific things which worked for them, beyond just an abstract idea to "be virtuous". Find like-minded individuals, partner with them, share your learnings, and set gradually more ambitious goals for yourselves.
Garvey 101, Ebenezer. Have you ever listened to any Bob Marley song?
The history of African people is full of martyrs nailed on the cross of "being agentic", so we are quite familiar with sacrifice, ambition, and drive. I'm sure you've heard of all the assassinations, torture, etc.
The United States has many problems, like narcotics, obesity, and homelessness. Is one to assume that, based on that, individuals and groups in this society have a problem with "finding like-minded individuals, partnering with them, sharing their learnings, and setting gradually more ambitious goals for themselves"? It's plausible. Sounds like something that could happen. It could be framed that way.
Like I said, you're correct in spirit. A great deal of organizing things needs to happen. In fact, the genesis of our problems is that we never really did this. No one actually organized and planned a civilization called "Kenya" except the erstwhile empire. Not in coherent economic terms anyway. All the hard work that goes into that was skipped.
So of course at some point we each have to reach into our hearts, gather our virtues, and collectively be more Christ-like in the name of building a country.
Totally agree with the tourism-as-revisiting-the-colonial-experience discussion. Since day one, Kenya has marketed the hollywood idea of a safari --- to the benefit of the khaki-clad mzungu operators who sell nostalgia. Jet setters in Maasai Mara luxury camps, around 5 star meals with French wines served by African waiters in fez caps, shuka-clad Maasai standing guard near the camp fire.
But I do agree with Kenya's green energy plans. As you pointed out, growth in generation is driven by demand, not policy papers, and post-COVID Kenya had to cancel power projects because Kenya Power didn't have enough demand to sell its expensive power. Coal power plants wouldn't solve that one. Believe it or not, about 400 MW of solar (10% of the installed capacity) has been installed by industry on their side of the meters in the past 4 years because C&I solar players deliver power at a lower cost than KPLC. The trend to self supply will continue as lithium battery costs continue to drop (50% in the last 18 months). Electric mobility is going to be a key piece of electricity demand stimulation. E-boda-boda's are everywhere as are e-buses -- because they are cost effective.
In a system like Kenya’s—where appointments are driven by coalition maintenance rather than execution—what does it realistically take to break free from being hostage elite-driven patronage politics that you described?
The deterioration of performance culture to performance theater culture is a huge issue...
Can a leader with enough political capital carve out islands of excellence by empowering high-performing technocrats? Or does it usually take a major crisis, like Indonesia’s post-1997 Asian Financial Crisis reforms, to force real governance change?
Is the hope to wait for a debt default to drive change?
It seems like the lack of energy generation and lack of electricity demand from industrial customers are a rock and a hard place between which it's hard to become unstuck. Would it be useful for the state to stand up or subsidize some industrial firms in sectors that needn't be models of rigorous efficiency so they can be "anchor tenant" customers of new coal and gas plants until entrepreneurs can devise cleverer ways of taking advantage of surplus power? Such as steel mills? Maybe as urban bus fleets turn over some of them can turn to electric buses and economize on the country's fuel import bill somewhat. Perhaps electric motorcycles and other EVs will also become attractive alternatives to ICE models and can therefore also make use of electrical supply slack. Hospitals, internet service providers, households, telecom, data centers, mines, construction are usually thirsty for electricity and probably provide some upward elasticity of demand. Grid batteries, too, can soak up excess as they do for solar power. Great article, Dr Opalo
Would it be helpful for donors or states to use Mem Rise and other popular language learning software and podcasts to try to expand English in partially anglophone countries like Nigeria and Kenya, as well as French, Portuguese, and Arabic in the countries where those languages are widely but not universally spoken?
The only ambitious leader I see on the African continent is Paul Kagame. That is why I never ever listen to his detractors. If Nigerian leaders were half the man that Kagame was, then things will move very fast in the right direction