Yes I do, and yes, since it brings me no economic benefit and I could easily live without it, it is a waste of money.
By comparison, my smartphone allows me to send emails, make phone calls, and generally communicate with my colleagues. This creates value. Watching TV or Netflix creates no economic value.
It might create social value, but the OP is about creating economic value.
> Did you address that with your projects - like if you bought this apparatus for this amount you could process millet and run a company earning this amount.
Yes! Of course they realized that people might not have the ideal or the capital to go and buy one of these machines. They worked on a hire to own scheme with local partners, and offered a lower energy price to those who wanted to buy one.
Again, only a tiny percentage of people were interested in doing this.
> setting up a TV in a communal building
This is quite difficult to achieve. You cannot be seen as picking favourites, it's really not something that works from a business perspective in these communities. People get envious really quickly.
So, communal buildings. Well, there aren't any. The government has basically no presence in these places, and asking them to build a building would probably take 5 years, if it happened at all.
The only buildings that really exist are businesses, and if you set up a TV there, the guy running it will charge people to watch it. You're playing favourites!
You could give every business a TV, but then everyone will rush to set up a "business" so they can benefit from the scheme as well.
This company itself cannot set up a TV or build a community structure because quite frankly, it will be vandalized for parts. Also the legal situation in these countries w.r.t. copyright and statements against the governments is appalling. So there is a huge liability toward providing services to the community (e.g. internet, distributing content on SD cards)
> How was the power being generated?
Small scale PV array built in the village with supporting equipment housed in a structure. The scale of these projects was <20kWp.
Look. I'm not trying to sound negative. I want Africa to develop. They absolutely have the chance to be the next China and become an economic power house.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening with the current political and regulatory environment there.
Thanks for fleshing things out. If you don't mind one last question - you mentioned about communality not really working [for TV ownership at least], who then owns the PV array - is it your company that owns it, does the community acquire ownership over time. Who is responsible for repair and the costs of that?
The company owns it, and they handle operating costs and maintenance.
At this time, there are no plans to transfer ownership to the community.
Ownership transfer has been done before, notably by some NGOs, and to my knowledge it has always ended up with the system failing due to lack of maintenance (either due to skills or funds) and being parted out.
Yes I do, and yes, since it brings me no economic benefit and I could easily live without it, it is a waste of money.
By comparison, my smartphone allows me to send emails, make phone calls, and generally communicate with my colleagues. This creates value. Watching TV or Netflix creates no economic value.
It might create social value, but the OP is about creating economic value.
> Did you address that with your projects - like if you bought this apparatus for this amount you could process millet and run a company earning this amount.
Yes! Of course they realized that people might not have the ideal or the capital to go and buy one of these machines. They worked on a hire to own scheme with local partners, and offered a lower energy price to those who wanted to buy one.
Again, only a tiny percentage of people were interested in doing this.
> setting up a TV in a communal building
This is quite difficult to achieve. You cannot be seen as picking favourites, it's really not something that works from a business perspective in these communities. People get envious really quickly.
So, communal buildings. Well, there aren't any. The government has basically no presence in these places, and asking them to build a building would probably take 5 years, if it happened at all.
The only buildings that really exist are businesses, and if you set up a TV there, the guy running it will charge people to watch it. You're playing favourites!
You could give every business a TV, but then everyone will rush to set up a "business" so they can benefit from the scheme as well.
This company itself cannot set up a TV or build a community structure because quite frankly, it will be vandalized for parts. Also the legal situation in these countries w.r.t. copyright and statements against the governments is appalling. So there is a huge liability toward providing services to the community (e.g. internet, distributing content on SD cards)
> How was the power being generated?
Small scale PV array built in the village with supporting equipment housed in a structure. The scale of these projects was <20kWp.
Look. I'm not trying to sound negative. I want Africa to develop. They absolutely have the chance to be the next China and become an economic power house.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening with the current political and regulatory environment there.