Frontlines Online Edition
Power/Trade Africa
September/October 2014

How Do You Save a Life in the Dark?

Video: How Do You Save a Life in the Dark?
About 600 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, forcing them to spend significant amounts of their income on costly and unhealthy forms of energy like diesel to run factory generators, and wood-burning indoor stoves that produce toxic smoke and subsequent illness.

For health clinics, the consequences are even starker and more immediate. There, the lack of light and electricity means not being able to save a life because health workers cannot see adequately and there is no power to run basic equipment.

Power Africa works with African governments, the private sector and other partners such as the World Bank and African Development Bank to add more than 30,000 megawatts of cleaner, more efficient electricity generation capacity in sub-Saharan Africa.