Some entrepreneurs and financiers believe that Africa can benefit from the economic opportunities of climate change. They hold a radically different vision of the climate trends, seeing the chance for jobs and development, instead of just doom and gloom.
Is someone selling you counterfeit malaria pills? Let a mobile phone check on that for you. (1)
Too poor to have a bank account? Try mobile banking.(2)
Are you a herder in Kenya or Tanzania and have a sick goat? Track it on a mobile phone. (3)
Someone trying to pull a real estate scam on you in Lagos? Let Google’s Android handle that for you.(4)
Now, the World Bank is wondering if the mobile phone story may be the ticket out of energy poverty for rural sub-Saharan Africa.
Nathaniel Mulcahy’s speaks with the urgency and precision of someone on a mission and with little time.
Although he has patiently and politely dedicated the better part of an hour to our conversation, I know that the moment he hangs up he will be off to complete a million tasks on his to-do list.
Mulcahy has good reasons to be in a hurry. The first one is that he cheated death seven years ago following a really bad accident, so he’s a man on his second chance.
The second reason, which is linked to the first, is that he is determined to bring energy-efficient cookstoves to the world’s 2.4 billion people who sit at the bottom of the world’s energy ladder. They are the poorest of the poor who lack access to modern fuels and must make do with wood, charcoal, and animal dung to meet their everyday energy needs.
So what is this thing they call biochar, you ask?
It’s been described as the Swiss Army knife, or the “killer app” of climate solutions.
Now, leaders of the G20 have a chance to put it on the map!
The latest quarterly update from the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (Bulletin 23)is dedicated to harnessing the power of the carbon credit market to support stove projects around the world.