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Tropentag 2022, September 14 - 16, Prague, Germany

"Can agroecological farming feed the world? Farmers' and academia's views."


Renewable energy in Africa

Faouzia Smiti1, Ogunsola Kudirat Omolola2

1El Mandra, Tunisia
2University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf, Germany


Abstract


Agriculture accounts for 30 to 40% of total Gross domestic product in Africa, and a majority Energy is essential to our society to ensure our quality of life and to underpin all other elements of our economy. Renewable energy technologies offer the promise of clean, abundant energy gathered from self-renewing resources such as the sun, wind, earth, and plants. Africa is one of the rich continents in which you found all this resources.
The sunny continental can produce enough energy for the world in 300 km × 300 km only the reason of high number for sunny hour (1800 h in Africa to 1000 h in Europe). Hydropower, the main current RE resource in West Africa, is strongly sensitive to monsoon rainfall variability, which has led to power crises in the past. Therefore, solar and wind power could play a stronger role in the future as countries move to power systems with high shares of RE. Without forget the geothermal water which the temperature can reach up to 78°C in 2000 m deep.
For example, at the end of 2020 in north Africa Tunisia had about 400MW of installed renewable energy capacity of which 244 MW was wind power, 89 MW solar power (79 MW by private entities and 10 MW by STEG), and 62 MW of hydroelectric power. However, in west Africa part of Nigeria is blessed with abundant Renewable Energy resources that have not been fully exploited; these renewable resources have the potentials to change the status quo of power generation and consumption in the country.


Keywords: Africa, agriculture, geothermal, hydropower, renewable energy, solar power


Contact Address: Faouzia Smiti, El Mandra, Tunis, Tunisia, e-mail: mandra.ccfa@gmail.com


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