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So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,

At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]

Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.

Rwanda will join the rest of Africa to urge developed countries to reduce their carbon emissions by 40 percent come 2050.

Some 365 giant wind turbines are to be installed in desert around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya – used as a backdrop for the film The Constant Gardener – creating the biggest windfarm on the continent. When complete in 2012, the £533m project will have a capacity of 300MW, a quarter of Kenya's current installed power and one of the highest proportions of wind energy to be fed in a national grid anywhere in the world. 

This training package on “Sustainable Energy Regulation and Policymaking for Africa” provides an introduction to the key issues relating to the energy market and energy regulation, as they affect sustainable energy (energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewable energy).

The joint statement stressed the urgent need to promote Africa
electrification and agreed to launch as soon as possible the process for the
elaboration of an Electricity Master-Plan for Africa; they also
agreed to further define the Capacity Building Programme in support to
the African Power Pools and
AFUR^[1] which will be financed
under the Energy
Facility^[2];

Providing electricity to people in countries where either the grid is not reliable, or nonexistent and unlikely ever to be built, can make a huge difference in people’s quality of life in very practical ways. We’ve written before about companies such as D.Light Design which have solar-powered replacements for kerosene lanterns , and efforts to bring small-scale solar panels to off-grid villages in Laos. Hand cranked cell phone chargers, radios and flashlights are other proven options that have received attention.

The Government this week unveiled a plan to supply power to more than 261 health centres.

The Euro 36.5m (about Frw27.4b) project was presented before development partners this week. Most of the targeted health centres are based in rural areas.

Its a video of William Kamkwamba, a young African boy who built a windmill to provide his house with electricity back when he was 14! If you look at the “ingredients” he used for his windmill, they are mostly junk parts which you will probably be able to find around your house. I don’t know how long it took him to build the windmill but it definitely doesn’t look like any easy feat. The windmill looks HUGE!!