For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

Not a representative sample of Western humanity. Look up surveys on knowledge and beliefs; you'll be very surprised.

Ethiopia is threating to decend into a another civil war. Military Coups happens someplace every few years. ISIS is doing their terrorism in the north east. Lately Kenya has been one of the better countries in the region, but who knows if that will continue - I wish them luck.

Even in context of Nigeria, all your points miss the important fact that if the government isn't stable and protects you from crime/terrorists all investments are a waste as they will be destroyed.

But we also have to be honest and concede that while the others may have usable rule of law to varying degrees, Nigeria has a looong way to go in this regard. Uganda could use a bit of help as well in that dimension.

There are others, such as forced structural adjustments (e.g. privatisation) and currency control (in the case of the French and former West African colonies).

Each African country has a different context, and it does a disservice to laggards and over performers to club everyone as "African".

There are unique administrative hurdles and innovations that African countries have to either spark industries or smother them.

Humans are the same irrespective of our country of origin - the main difference is how public and private institutions manage humans.

An island of density in a sea of empty.

And Nigeria's grid has its own set of issues.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/rio-tinto-signs-massive-solar-an...

> There is no reason why, in some places, (firm and reliable supply) cannot be achieved via a mix of intermittent renewables, provided that this mix is ‘firmed’ via batteries and other sources.

> “The hurdle here is not technical, it is, … the overall net economic cost of the combined solution. This is materially helped by the continuous downward trend of battery costs, but the incremental cost of the last percentages of firming can indeed prove expensive.”

(Also of relevance, Australia is actually replacing some long distance grid connections with mini solar grids as a cost reduction move, which suggests mini grids are the right option for remote communities)

So you need to store energy for more than a few hours or generate it from something else.

You then have the choice to use batteries(costly for megwatts as of now), things like hydrostorage, fossil fuels(gas/coal/oil) or hydrogen generated from renewable sources.

If you need big energy storages anyway, it makes more sense that communities pool their money together and invest in something like hydrostorage, but then you need a grid to connect the communities and if you do that, you might as well connect everything in the country so the grid is better at balancing.

That can't be, your panel is charging up your neighbor's car in exactly the same way independently of you being connected to outside of your neighborhood.

I can't speak to why there historically hasn't been as much manufacturing in Africa—I'm guessing it's just cheaper to colocate with others for lower costs across the board?

Regardless, (neo)colonialism does dominate both regions—it's a hard state to avoid if you want to interact with a global economy at a deep financial disadvantage.

Japan was a first world country, an economic success before WWII, and then had the US occupation after the war to rebuild it economically and politically as a hedge against future Japanese threats and against Russia and China.

South Korea never suffered Western colonialism (?) but did suffer under Japan. After that and the Korean War, iirc it was one of the poorest places on Earth. Now they are among the wealthiest and most free, maybe the greatest such accomplishment ever. They also benefitted from direct US support, as a counter-balance to the neighboring communist states.

Taiwan has direct US support to contain the communist regime in mainland China, first as a right-wing authoritarian dictatorship and then as a democracy.

China suffered 50-150 years of Western colonialsm, depending on how you measure it (the UK still controlled Hong Kong until the late 1990s). They were very poor into the 1990s. Then, opening their economy to investment (a project begun in the late 1970s), and with major manufacturing economies as neighbors (Japan, Taiwan, S Korea, etc.), they became the center of global manufacturing and trade and reaped the financial benefits.

By comparison, how will African countries attract investment? They are geopolitically located in a place that matters, and are not the global center of population nor many of the other Chinese advantages such as a massive single market that complied with Western requirements, proximity to wealthy neighbors such as Japan, Taiwan, etc.