A Chinese-built park 35km from Addis Ababa was meant to seed 20,000 local jobs. By late 2017 it had created roughly 10,000 – a real number, and a measure of the distance left to travel.
Section
Economics
Power as Productivity: Why Africa’s Energy Gap Is a Jobs Problem First
Energy access is usually counted in households connected. The sharper measure is what unreliable power does to the firms and workers who already have a line.
Green Triad: How Hydropower, Wind and Solar Anchor a New China-Africa Bargain
Beijing frames its African energy work as a single green transition. The record shows three very different technologies, doing very different jobs, in very different places.
Early-Warning Systems: Two Islands, One Test of Resilience Infrastructure
Climate early-warning systems for Seychelles and Madagascar are the quiet end of the green portfolio. Modest in scale, they may be the most directly protective of lives – if they reach beyond two
Africa Solar Belt: A Demonstration Pledge Meets a 600-Million Access Gap
China frames the Africa Solar Belt as a clean-energy access story. Yet the materials it lists – streetlights, kits, one power station – sit against a shortfall of more than 600 million people.
Cheap and Clean: Can Low-Cost Renewables Make African Factories Competitive
Chinese-built solar and hydro promise the low tariffs manufacturers need, but cheap clean power only sharpens competitiveness when the rest of the industrial base is ready.
Selling Sunlight Downhill: Ethiopia and Djibouti Wire a Regional Power Trade
A second 230-kV line will lift Djibouti’s import capacity from Ethiopia toward 220 MW – turning surplus hydropower into an export and a neighbour’s reliable supply.
East Africa’s Dams: Chinese Hydropower Tests the Industrial Promise
China-built dams now anchor East Africa’s grids, yet cheap megawatts alone have not delivered the factories and jobs the projects were sold to underwrite.
Floating the Shortfall: Bui Adds Solar to Steady a River-Bound Grid
Bui’s hydropower output swings with the Black Volta. Ghana’s answer is to float solar on the same reservoir – turning one dam into a planning platform.