Back to the Future?
I am excited about this one!! Why? Because my hope is you will eventually be able to question Africa’s readiness for change.
“A change gon’ come|Oh, yes it will” uncle Sam Cooke sang.
But before we get to it, allow me to preface this with the tale of Marty McFly and Doc Brown and their adventures through temporal displacement. Marty, the protagonist of the Back to the Future movie trilogy (1985–1989), envisages how the future will look, specifically 21st Oct 2015. The future that Marty experiences’ self-lacing shoes, hoverboards, and flying cars that can run on banana peels and electricity. While we aren't at the point of flying cars yet, it is intriguing that we are might be closer to Marty’s 2015 than we appreciate. (on a side note, 21 Oct 2015 was so big that Google set up a doodle and Nike are retailing limited edition self-lacing sneakers.)
In my last piece, I mention General Motors’ (GM) intention of only selling electric cars by 2035. In a podcast by the Economist, Herbert Diess, the VW chief executive, stated Volkswagen’s (VW) plans to have 20% of its global fleet consist of electric vehicles. He further shares that VW can't commit to a completely electric car fleet similar to GM, mainly due to the varied energy and road infrastructure across the globe, for example, Latin America has made more advancements in biodiesel /biofuels compared to other regions. As such VW intends to maintain a diversified fleet consisting of electric cars, hybrids and “combustion engine cars”.
However, two curious things he does mention in that podcast;
- That the infrastructure for electric vehicles in available at least in Europe. Electric cars are now fast-charging, i.e. you can now charge 100km in 5 minutes, not as fast as you would fuel 100km, but pretty close.
- That the auto industry is transitioning to a software consumer industry like your mobile phone. That is why we have fast-charging vehicles.
Software Future — The Electric Vehicle
I propose we think about the idea of the motor vehicle industry morphing into a software consumer industry. Embers of this were witnessed when Google and Apple developed a self-driving car. On paper, neither Apple nor Google should be daring to move to the auto industry — considering both are in the consumer electronic space of phone, software and laptops! But here we are. Years later, Tesla dared to dream and developed and are retailing the Autopilot. How radical is this??!! This bold step by Tesla coupled with the implementation of the European Union (EU)Green Deal has revised how the energy industry works. For context, the sale of electric vehicles almost doubled from 2.5% in 2019 to 4.2% in 2020 and Norway accounted for 74% of the sales. This in practice means that our cars will turn to hubs of software and not the usual combustion engines we are accustomed to. Meaning we might get to a point where your local mechanic will need to have an idea of coding? or will we have mechanics or software engineers?
While this is the case of consumers, governments aren't lagging, in Montreal, Canada the city plans to ban non-electric vehicles by 2030. But what about Africa, where do we feature? Furthermore, the entry of electric taxis in Nairobi and electric cars in Southern Africa — through the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) — shows a willingness in a clean energy transition.
While all these plans are in line with combating climate change, it is, however, important to acknowledge that the shift from the combustion engine to electric vehicles doesn’t is futile if we are still dependent on fossils fuel for electricity production.
Renewable Energy
“We have to use renewable sources of energy to protect our environment, and ensure that we pass down, to our sons and daughters, a country as clean and green as we inherited from our fathers,” President Uhuru Kenyatta
In 2018, President Kenyatta declared that Kenya is on track to attain 100% green sufficiency by 2020, pointing out the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project and the Garissa Solar Plant as he presided over a groundbreaking ceremony in Nakuru for a geothermal power plant unit. In isolation, this should be the example African countries emulate -100% green energy sufficiency — On the flip side, we are still developing our Oil Fields in South Lokichar which is a step in proliferating our fossil fuels. Furthermore, we are looking to set up a coal power plant in Lamu!
Our power distributor has not been absolved from this mess. With frequent power blackout and a poor power distribution network the monopoly has been under fire. Clients threatened to move to solar, and what is the rebuttal from the government? a threat to tax solar products. This is the paradox of Kenya and by extension Africa- where a government can speak from both sides of its mouth.
It is encouraging that the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) a fund domiciled at the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) invested $122 million in 60 renewable energy projects producing approximately 699MW of power in 2019 as highlighted in their 2019 report. This is in line with the bank’s commitment to increase climate financing to $ 25 billion by 2025 and halt the financing of coal projects. While this is not nearly enough, it is an encouraging start.
Going back to the adventures of Marty McFly and the eccentric Doc Brown, they end up time travelling, in a DeLorean from 1985 to 2015. According to Doc Brown, time travel is initially made possible through plutonium but in 2015 temporal displacement is made possible through banana peels - if this isn't a more apt metaphor for how quickly technology moves I don't know what is.
So, are we ready for electric cars as a continent? Can we pave the way for clean energy production technologies or renewable energy innovation? Or Biofuels? or better yet can we manufacture flying cars?. While this is anyone guesses one thing I know is that we need to radically shift our thinking.
