Will Africa's Population Boom Outpace Electrification Efforts?

Will Africa's Population Boom Outpace Electrification Efforts?

I dined recently with Joe, a Nigerian who manages a 400-hectare rice farm in the north of his country. Nigeria imports about 2.4 million metric tons of rice annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmers like Joe are helping to move his country of 237 million people toward self-sufficiency in rice.But farmer Joe has a handicap. “For me, the power grid is a fiction,” he says. “I don’t get any electricity from the grid, and I n…