Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: November 6, 2024

America is bringing life-changing electricity to rural Burundi!

America is investing in mass electrification for impoverished Burundi, in a life-changing project set to raise the nation’s access to electricity from 12% of the population today to 76% in 2030.

Tell Congress to sustain and expand U.S. investment in electrifying Africa!

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Reasons for Hope

Burundi.

The Biden-Harris Administration has long worked to increase American investment in fast-growing Africa. Now, in an inconspicuous but life-changing milestone, the United States will be funding mass rural electrification for the impoverished nation of Burundi through the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) and Development Finance Corporation (DFC¹), supporting local utility startup Weza Power in a plan to expand the rural grid. Burundi built its first solar farm recently and is planning many more; the modern economics of rural electricity make it near-certain that solar will provide the lion’s share of this new power surge.

Women construction workers at the Mubuga solar field, Burundi.

Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, and currently only about 12% of the country (less than 2% in rural areas!) has access to electricity. This project is set to raise that from 2% and 12% to over 70% in rural areas and 76% nationally by 2030, giving over 9 million Burundians access to electricity for the first time. Lives will be transformed across this nation, thanks to U.S. investment and global solar progress.

“These agreements, and the cooperative efforts to provide electricity to all Burundians, represents another U.S. investment in the future of this country. With an expanded national grid, and increased power supplies, electricity will reach the rural communities. Every single Burundian will someday benefit from the impact of these projects.”

-U.S. Ambassador to Burundi Lisa Peterson.

After rapid development across Asia in recent years, most people in most of the world now have access to electricity. Now, we need to bring power to Africa!

This is absolutely spectacular work! African rural electrification barely gets any attention in the U.S., so a few constituents’ voices in support could have a big positive impact.

Tell Congress to sustain and expand U.S. investment in electrifying Africa!

1. Yes, that’s the same U.S. DFC we recently wrote about as catalyzing cleantech manufacturing in India! To recap, the DFC is a U.S. government agency that invests in private sector-led international development projects in a number of fields, from energy to infrastructure to healthcare to telecoms. Their work is notably not traditional “foreign aid”: like a bank, they expect a return on investment, and on net they make money for the United States. The DFC’s resources are considerable, with $9.3 billion committed across 132 transactions in fiscal year 2023, and a total portfolio exposure of $41 billion.