(Sub-Saharan) Africa Calling

Over the short lifespan of this newsletter, my content has been a combination of somewhat random missives on the stagnation around us and country case studies stemming from my somewhat serious travel addiction.

For the next half a year, we will try something different. I will spend most of my academic sabbatical in Sub-Saharan Africa, where I plan to study the regional energy transition. I hope to cover most of the major economies, with boots on the ground.

There’s a few reasons why I am excited about studying the African energy transition:

1. Sub-Saharan Africa has by far the least developed energy infrastructure in the world. While other regions face the challenge of displacing fossil fuels, African countries mostly face the challenge of adding clean energy to meet demand.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa has the youngest population in the world. Other major regions of the world are by now geriatric, with little dynamism and a lot of soul searching about what went wrong. African countries, instead, must find a way to tap into their youth’s talent.

3. I have done quite extensive work everywhere else in the world except Sub-Saharan Africa. I did run one waste management survey in Tanzania and play a modest role in some data analytics on decentralized solar in Kenya and Rwanda. But that’s not exactly sensei level.

I am hoping to finish my Uzbekistan case study before the end of the calendar year. After that, here we will focus exclusively on Sub-Saharan Africa.