By Finbarr Toesland
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 14 2024 – Often referred to as the “Sun continent,” Africa receives more hours of bright sunlight than any other continent. But even with 60 per cent of the world’s solar resources, Africa has only one per cent of solar generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Due to energy production and infrastructure challenges, many African countries regularly deal with blackouts, brownouts and poor electricity supply. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global economy hard, and commodity prices surged after the invasion of Ukraine, making energy even more difficult for poorer Africans to buy.

Increasingly, start-ups rather than established corporations are offering access to advanced solar energy solutions to the majority of people across Africa. By harnessing the sun’s power and transitioning to clean energy, Africans can expect major economic and social developments across the continent.

Solar energy brightens other industries

Headquartered in Nairobi, SunCulture has raised over $40 million to equip rural farmers with solar-powered irrigation systems. Instead of counting on rainfall or revving up diesel or petrol pumps, farmers can now rely on solar-powered systems that are cheaper, use renewable energy and need minimal maintenance.

Once the company installs a solar panel on top of a farmer’s house and connects it to a battery-powered water pump, the irrigation system can cover up to three acres.

“Solar is particularly attractive because of its positive environmental impact, job creation potential, and economic development potential,” said Mikayla Czajkowski, chief of staff at SunCulture.

“African nations have immense potential to benefit from utilizing solar energy – especially in remote and under-served regions where energy access is limited – and facilitates a reduction in the continent’s carbon footprint, making a valuable contribution to global efforts to combat climate change,” Ms. Czajkowski added.

In an impact survey of SunCulture’s customers, measurement company 60 Decibels [a US-based an organisation that offers customized assessments] found that SunCulture brought about significant improvements: 89 per cent of smallholder farmers experienced a boost in their quality of life, 90 per cent increased their production, and 87 per cent enhanced their earnings.

Ambitious start-ups

From GridX Africa, a firm that offers off-grid solar power to farms, safari lodges for tourists and construction projects in Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania, to the pay-as-you-go solar company Bboxx and the Egypt-based solar power developer and electricity distributor KarmSolar, Africa has no shortage of original solar energy start-ups.

While the ambitions of these solar businesses are laudable, achieving high levels of growth is not easy.

Emily McAteer, founder and chief executive officer, of Odyssey Energy Solutions spent more than a decade working to finance and build distributed solar projects across Africa and India.

Her firm provides technology and finance solutions for distributed renewable energy businesses. At every stage of project development, she hit key bottlenecks that make it hard for solar companies like hers to scale.

By offering tools for solar developers to aggregate and pitch portfolios of projects to financiers, firms can access capital more effectively. To procure equipment more effectively, Odyssey streamlined the procurement process by negotiating directly with original equipment manufacturers for better prices and warranties and by working with developers for supply chain support.

“Operations and maintenance, especially in remote areas, can be a big hurdle,” Ms. McAteer said. “We offer hardware and software that sits on top of solar assets so that operators and investors can get deep insight into performance and optimize performance of their systems.”

Global initiatives need catalytic capital

More than 500 million people living in Africa have no access to electricity, according the IEA Africa Energy Outlook 2022. Governments and non-governmental organizations have launched many high-profile schemes to boost the solar energy sector in African countries, with mixed success. The continent needs a global response to address a challenge of this immense scale.

Launched in 2012, the US-Africa Clean Energy Finance (US-ACEF) initiative attempted to offset the costs of the early-stage development of clean energy projects, in a bid to draw investment to these ventures.

Solar is particularly attractive because of its positive environmental and economic impacts.

For Ms. McAteer, the US-ACEF model proved effective. Now innovators need higher levels of catalytic capital to continue scaling so that they can meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7, “Ensuring access to Clean and Affordable Energy.”

“Annual capital investment in renewables in emerging markets needs to reach $1 trillion per year if the world is to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. US-ACEF set the model for how the industry can achieve that,” Ms. McAteer said. “Now the missing piece is continued investment from both public and private financiers.”

Innovation underway across Africa

So far, the US-ACEF has supported 32 projects, with country-specific investments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Nijhad Jamal, managing partner of Equator, an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on climate technology in sub-Saharan Africa, agrees that Africa’s solar energy sector has benefited greatly from US-ACEF.

“There is a lot more impact to come from US-ACEF with projects like the Health Electrification Alliance, which aims to electrify over 10,000 health facilities in Africa,” Mr. Jamal said. “Most of the US-ACEF projects emphasize sustainability. In our opinion, this will have a lasting impact on the solar energy sector.”

Source: Africa Renewal– a United Nations digital magazine that covers Africa’s economic, social and political developments—and the challenges the continent faces and the solutions to these by Africans themselves, including with the support of the United Nations and international community.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Feb 14 2024 – Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe. He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief admits that Netanyahu “doesn’t listen to anyone”.

Anis Chowdhury

Israel’s impunity

One should not be surprised at all at Israel’s defiance. It has been enjoying impunity ever since it was established in 1948. When David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May, 1948, the US President Harry S. Truman recognised the new nation on the same day. Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which are legally binding on the UN Member States.

Between 1972 and February 2023 the US has cast a veto 53 times in the UNSC against anti-Israel resolutions or condemnations of Israel. An opinion piece in Israel’s reputable newspaper, Haaretz asked, “When Will the U.S. Get Tired of Helping Israel With UN Vetoes?” It vetoed every attempt by the UNSC for a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza, following 7 October Hamas attack on Israel that have resulted in nearly 30,000 deaths most of whom are children and women.

When Joe Biden met with Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet during his visit to Israel, immediately following the Hamas attack, President Biden assured them: “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist”. Faced with global outcry and domestic pressure, especially within the Democratic Party and growing dissent of administration staff, President Biden expressed some frustrations, saying Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is “indiscriminate” or Israel’s reaction to the 7 October Hamas attack was “over the top”.

But the US and its allies’ military, financial and diplomatic supports for Israel continue unconditionally. The US and its Western allies, especially Germany and the UK, are critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ seeking an interim injunction against plausible violations of the Genocide Convention. They dismissed it as “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”, or “wrong and provocative”, rushing to defend Israel at the ICJ, while Israel’s President called it “atrocious and preposterous.”

The West has failed to stop Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied land of Palestine. Occasionally the US and its Western allies have used some stronger words like “deeply dismayed”, “deeply troubled” and “strongly opposed,” not to mention banal expressions such as “against unilateral steps” and “calls for restraint and stability”, reiterating their “commitment to a 2-State solution”.

As the Haaretz opinion piece observed, “These bland themes carry no consequences. They’re not much different from the “thoughts and prayers” that American politicians offer after a mass shooting. These hollow statements from Washington have become the foreign policy version of “nothing to see here, carry on.”

The US and its Western allies condemn “form the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” as anti-Semitic. But fail to mention the Likud Party’s manifesto which says “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and … [the land, i.e., Judea and Samaria] between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. No one raised any concerns when Netanyahu in September 2023 gleefully displayed at the annual UN General Assembly Session the new Middle-East map with Israel from the “River to the Sea”, less than a month before the 7 October Hamas attack.

Why should one be surprised when Israel’s influential finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, accused President Joe Biden of engaging in an “anti-Semitic lie” in reaction to Biden’s administrative order of sanctions against violent Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank? Is it not ironic that a self-declared non-Jew Zionist is accused of anti-Semitism? Netanyahu termed the US sanctions as “drastic” and declared “there is no place for drastic steps on this matter.”

Ariel Sharon spoke the truth

Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel, said in an acrimonious argument with his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, “Every time we do something, you tell me Americans will do this and do that. I want to tell you something very clear; don’t worry about American pressure on Israel; we, the Jewish people, control America ….”.

Supporting Israel has historically been incredibly politically popular in the US, bolstered by a well-funded pro-Israel lobby in Washington, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). James Petras in his “The Power of Israel in the United States” (2006), provided detailed analysis and documentation of the power of Israel via the Israeli, Jewish or Pro-Zionist Lobby. He explored the extraordinary extent of US political, economic, military and diplomatic support for the state of Israel, along with the means whereby such support is generated and consolidated.

Petras’ book sheds light on the AIPAC spying scandal and other Israeli espionage against America; the fraudulent and complicit role of America’s academic “terrorist experts” in furthering criminal government policies, and the orchestration of the Danish cartoons to foment antipathy between Muslims and the West. James Petras argued that Zionist power in America ensured unconditional US backing for Israeli colonisation of Palestine and its massive uprooting of Palestinians.

Frankenstein’s fate?

In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, the scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a monster. The monster attempts to fit into human society, but finds itself rejected; thus, becoming vengeful, especially against its creator.

The monster killed Frankenstein’s younger brother, best friend and bride on their wedding night, whereupon Frankenstein’s father died of grief. Finally, Frankenstein dedicated himself to destroying his creation. But the monster goaded him to pursuing him the North, through Scandinavia and into Russia, staying ahead of him the entire way. Suffering from severe exhaustion and hypothermia, Victor Frankenstein died at the end.

As Israel tramples over all the international institutions, including the UN, the US and its Western allies have become complicit in the destruction of the rule-based world order that they themselves created. Israel’s open defiance of the US and its Western allies is a clear sign that it is too late to reign in the monster they created. As the US and its Western allies are losing influence and credibility in the Global South, one wonders whether the US-led West is facing Frankenstein’s fate.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, School of Business, Western Sydney University. He held senior United Nations positions in the area of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and Bangkok.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 14 2024 – A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.

Globalisation’s protracted decline
The age of globalization had mixed consequences, unevenly incorporating national markets for labour, goods and even some services. It ended gradually, with the trend far more pronounced following the protracted worldwide stagnation since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Sometimes still referred to as the Great Recession, Western central banks resorted to unconventional monetary policies, mainly ‘quantitative easing’, to keep their economies afloat. But easier credit enabled more financialization and indebtedness, rather than recovery, let alone sustainable development.

But the end of the era of globalization did not mean a simple return to the status quo ante. Most economies had been transformed irreversibly by economic liberalization, both nationally and internationally, with dire lasting consequences.

Market pressures for fiscal austerity were strengthened by conditionalities and advice from international financial institutions. This inevitably led to deep cuts in government spending, leaving little for public investments, which might contribute to the recovery of the real economy.

Interest rate hikes accelerate stagnation
The 2008 Wolfowitz doctrine, from late in the Bush Jr presidency, was revised by the Obama administration to launch the second Cold War. The COVID-19 pandemic and the last two years of war and sanctions have worsened supply-side disruptions exacerbating ‘cost-push’ inflation.

Some prices spiked due to opportunistic market manipulation by investors and speculators as well as deliberate disruptive interventions for political advantage. The rule of law – even once sacred property rights – has been sacrificed for political expediency, undermining trust, especially in states.

Hence, concerted interest rate hikes by influential Western central banks have proved to be an unnecessary, inappropriate and blunt demand-side tool to address contemporary inflation driven primarily by supply-side factors!

Instead of addressing inflation due to supply disruptions, higher interest rates have cut both private and government spending, resulting in less demand, jobs and incomes in much of the world.

In the US, successive presidents maintained full employment since Obama inherited the 2008 global financial crisis. Uniquely, its central bank, the US Fed, has a dual mandate to maintain full employment and financial stability.

All over the world, the deliberate and concerted interest rate hikes of 2022 and 2023 have proved to be both contractionary and biased against labour and jobs.

Global South’s hands tied
Policymakers in the Global South are greatly constrained by their circumstances. Exposed to global markets and with limited fiscal and monetary policy instruments at their disposal, they are captive to pro-cyclical policy biases.

The International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions tend to demand fiscal austerity conditionalities in return for any credit relief provided.

Thus, recipient governments are subject to spending constraints instead of providing relief. Worse, many legislatures have imposed unnecessary spending constraints on themselves, supposedly to enhance government fiscal credibility.

Supposedly independent central banks have further compounded monetary policy constraints. Such central banks are primarily responsive to international and national financial interests rather than national policy priorities.

Following monetary and financial liberalisation in recent decades, developing countries are much more exposed to debt crises worse than those experienced in the 1980s.

Then, governments in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere had borrowed heavily, mainly from US and UK commercial banks. After US Fed chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates sharply from 1980, severe fiscal and debt crises paralysed many of these governments for over a decade.

The debt exposure level is much higher and borrowed from varied sources, significantly more market-based and non-bank. Governments have also provided guarantees for state-owned enterprises to borrow heavily, but less accountably than with sovereign debt.

New divides in post-unipolar world
The unipolar world moment after the end of the first Cold War briefly saw unchallenged US hegemony. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development developed policies for the global North in trade, investment, technology, finance, tax and other vital areas, typically at the expense of the South.

More recently, the ‘new Cold War’ or geopolitical policies, including illegal sanctions, have frustrated developing countries’ aspirations to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, adapt to global warming and its effects, and retrieve a fairer share of global corporate income tax revenue.

With most economies barely growing, and efforts by many governments to reduce imports, export opportunities have become more uncertain and constrained, ending a crucial premise for globalisation. With higher interest rates, even finance has abandoned developing countries in ‘flights to safety’ to the US.

Lacking the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of issuing the US dollar, still the world’s reserve currency, most developing countries lack monetary, fiscal and policy space. Unlike rich nations which borrow in their own currencies, most developing countries remain vulnerable to foreign exchange rate vagaries.

Poorest getting poorer
With Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ launching US efforts to check China, its lending to developing countries, including in Sub-Saharan Africa, fell from around 2016.

Despite higher borrowing costs, many of the poorest countries turned to private creditors. But private market lending to poor nations dried up from 2022 as the US Fed raised interest rates sharply for almost two years.

As debt service costs soared, distress risks have risen sharply, especially in the poorest nations. While not obviously due to a conspiracy against the global South, there is little concern for the predicament of the worst off in the poorest countries.

Meanwhile, poverty in the poorest countries has not declined for over a decade.

With international disparities growing at the expense of the poorest people in the poorest nations, the desire to emigrate continues to rise although mainly unaffordable to the poorest.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Feb 14 2024 – UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, recently made an impassioned call for governments to support women and girls from marginalized communities at the frontlines of the defence of human rights, to help ensure, among others, that global health is protected.

This comes as the latest data from UNAIDS shows that:

• Globally, 46% of all new HIV infections were among women and girls in 2022
• In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) accounted for more than 77% of new infections among young people aged 15–24 years in 2022.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women (aged 15–24 years) were more than three times as likely to acquire HIV than their male peers in 2022.
• Every week, 4000 adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 years became infected with HIV globally in 2022, with 3100 of these infections occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Only about 42% of districts with high HIV incidence in sub-Saharan Africa had dedicated HIV prevention programmes for adolescent girls and young women in 2021.

Tendayi Westerhof, national director of the PAN-African Positive Women’s Coalition Zimbabwe (PAPWC-ZIM), was one of the first celebrities in Zimbabwe to disclose their HIV-positive status and is one of the most prominent figures in the fight against HIV/AIDS in her country.

Tendayi Westerhof interacts with people as she works to create awareness of the needs of people living with HIV.

IPS spoke to the former model turned HIV activist about defending the rights of people living with HIV and the key role women and girls can play in the AIDS response.

IPS: Do you think that, globally, governments have failed to do enough to support women and girls from marginalized communities who are defending the rights of people living with HIV (PLHIV) and if so, why have they not done enough?

Westerhof: First and foremost is to understand what the rights of people living with HIV are and to ascertain if both women, girls and people living with HIV know their rights. The AIDS response must centre around human rights at every level. PLHIV have the right to treatment access for HIV, they too have sexual and reproductive health rights and are not a homogenous group. It is important to recognize that aspect of diversity among women, girls and PLHIV and ensure that their universal human rights are protected at country level. Laws that criminalize PLHIV and key populations fuel the spread of HIV and AIDS and continue to put the significant many in these groups at risk of HIV, and fuel stigma and discrimination.

IPS: What kind of support should governments or other international bodies be giving to women and girls in marginalised communities who are defending rights for PLHIV?

Westerhof: Women and girls in marginalized communities must be recognized as equal partners in the response to end AIDS and that they too have human rights. They need support in terms of inclusion in leadership and decision-making spaces and not tokenistic appointments. They need both technical and financial resources to effectively defend the rights of PLHIV.

IPS: From your experience as an HIV activist working with PLHIV, why do you think women and girls from marginalised communities specifically should be leading the fight to defend the rights of PLHIV?

Westerhof: I believe in the mantra ”nothing about us without us”.  The Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV (GIPA) principles are clear in calling for the greater and meaningful involvement of people living with HIV in all our diversities.  PLHIV are vectors of the disease but must be seen as equal partners who are bringing the realities of living with HIV to ensure that the planning, design, and implementation of HIV programmes are tailored to address their needs. They are also experts on various aspects [of HIV] especially peer support, issues of treatment literacy/adherence, HIV prevention and awareness, with the main focus being to address stigma and discrimination. 

IPS: As someone living with HIV for a number of years, and an HIV activist, what have been the greatest challenges you have faced in trying to defend the rights of PLHIV?

Westerhof: My greatest challenge has been sometimes working in silos without a collective voice towards defending the rights of PLHIV.  Also limited resources: most defenders are driven to do their work by the experiences they have been through, and by their passion, and end up working as unpaid volunteers. Getting burnt out and sometimes forgetting self-care and other mental health issues. The big issues of inequality, gender-based violence, in particular intimate partner violence, stigma and discrimination. There have been socio-economic challenges, but other challenges of funding and new emerging issues such as climate change, and disasters are shifting the focus from the fight against HIV and AIDS and resources keep dwindling. We are still recovering from the impact of COVID-19 and we need to continue empowering women and adolescent girls with information about HIV/AIDS and other pandemics.

IPS: Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) have a disproportionate risk of acquiring HIV, compared to male peers, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for a number of reasons, including biological, socio-economic, religious, and cultural factors. Some experts have suggested these factors could be addressed through stricter sentences for sexual offenders, economically empowering AGYW, improving the provision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) education and services to AGYW, and better access to HIV prevention and treatment. But do you think these measures would be enough to significantly reduce the disproportionate risk of acquiring HIV that AGYW face, especially in SSA countries?

Westerhof: A lot is happening in my country to address issues of gender-based violence (GBV), and in particular sexual violence. There is a need to keep bringing GBV matters into the spotlight through the media.  Men’s/boys’ engagement in the response to end all forms of sexual violence must be intensified. Getting to boys at a younger age can help. Making use of our traditional and cultural leaders can also help to reduce GBV. AGYW still remain more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS and GBV than adult boys and young men (ABYM), and there is a need to continue with strategies that protect them.

IPS: Introducing any of the above measures, and ensuring their continued practical implementation would require the support of a number of state institutions, including not just judicial bodies, but health and economic institutions too. Do you have much confidence that these bodies and institutions would ensure that any laws passed, such as stricter sentences for sexual offenders, or guaranteeing better rights and access to HIV treatment for AGYW, would also be properly implemented in practice?

Westerhof: Most countries have these measures and law but the problem is operationalizing them. AGYW need continuous empowerment through these laws, and in how they can report cased of GBV. Victim-friendly courts are there, but sometimes they are not fully utilized. Perpetrators of GBV and sexual violence sometimes walk away scot-free in the absence of compelling evidence beyond reasonable doubt and other factors. Nevertheless, there are many perpetrators of GBV and sexual offences who are behind bars.

IPS: Stigma around HIV continues to play a significant role in fuelling epidemics as it puts many women off seeking treatment or accessing other services for fear their status may be disclosed. What should governments be doing to eliminate this stigma?

Westerhof: In my country the law prohibits stigma and discrimination of PLHIV, including women and AGYW. Also, a national study on stigma was conducted which provides guidance on how to plan, design and implement programs that aim to eliminate stigma and discrimination.

IPS: Do you think your own story as someone who publicly disclosed your HIV status despite the stigma around it at the time, your continued advocacy for PLHIV, and good health, is a good example for women and girls with HIV of the role they can play in helping to eliminate this stigma, and lead healthy, successful lives?

Westerhof: Disclosure helps to break the stigma and discrimination of HIV and AIDS. It encourages others to see that there is still life after a positive HIV test, as living with HIV is today a condition that can be managed with anti-retroviral therapy (ART). PLHIV have continued to play major roles in various communities, such as advocacy for better treatment, care, and support, community mobilization for HIV testing, cervical cancer screening, TB screening and others. Their testimonies have made it easier to make HIV and AIDS a normal  subject and increase the acceptance of PLHIV. My public disclosure of my HIV+ status opened new doors for me.

IPS: You have previously spoken of how important it is that people in local communities are educated about HIV, its treatment and its prevention, and that everyone has access to that education and treatment and prevention services. But in communities where strong patriarchal attitudes are prevalent, and stigma around HIV is high, what measures can be taken to ensure women and girls get that education and access to services?

Westerhof: Community leaders can play a role to ensure that patriarchal attitudes are eliminated. This is an ongoing process whereby people’s attitudes are eventually changed through behaviour change.

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