Unlimited Energy For Africa?

In My Humble Opinion
1

What if some mysterious entity were to come to Earth, tap into the Earth’s core in Africa to provide unlimited energy for the continent and provide unlimited solar power (e.g. space-based, futuristic systems, energy storage etc) and then leave it?

Would that then help Africa?

Would the continent then progress rapidly as it needn’t worry about energy needs?

Or would this entity need to do a bit more?

Note, that this entity isn’t a totalitarian statist or ultra-socialist. It merely travels the universe to give a gentle encouraging push to groups most at risk, those most in trouble and most poor (i.e. it has no interest in helping Asia or Europe or South America) and supplies advantages to those most disadvantaged (much like the historical European was lucky to harness the power of the gun in order to progress).

2

Welcome to the SDMB, AHeinrich. Since you’re looking for opinions and speculation, I’ll move this to IMHO (from MPSIMS).

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

3

From my understanding of Africa their lack of energy is just a small part of the problem. They also have issues with bad governments, civil war, ethnic strife, poor health care, lack of infrastructure, lack of education.

It would help, but I don’t know how much. Besides, solar panels are dropping drastically in cost and Africa would be a good spot for them due to the level of sunlight there. I believe there is work with microdams in Africa too, but I have no idea how widespread they are.

4

The same social and political problems that exist now would poison your scenario. Despotism and corruption, social problems, and tribalism would prevent your mysterious entity’s gift of unlimited energy from being a source of rapid progress across the continent.

Africa already has the potential for basically unlimited energy.

5

Then what can be done? If one was near-omnipotent, or at least a benevolent futuristic entity, what could one do? It can’t simply be left to foreign powers who are more in it for gain and self-interest, rather than any innate desire to actually advance peoples…

6

The most likely situation is you’d see African countries becoming the new equivalent of OPEC. The regimes in charge would make a fortune and have political influence due to controlling the supply of energy they sell. But only a small share of that prosperity would trickle down to the masses on the African street.

7

Cheap energy would be helpful, certainly. I’d imagine you’d quickly get a lot of foreign investment focusing on energy-heavy industries, and that would have a huge positive effect by creating the one thing most of Africa actually needs- jobs. It might calm some of the conflicts caused by other natural resources (oil in Nigeria, for example), as everyone focusing on marketing this new resource abroad. I’m assuming this energy is not bound to a particular location, and pretty much anyone can tap into it. This will probably avoid the “resource curse”, where natural resources cause economic imbalances and fighting. But there will still be some risk of foreign powers working against local interests. This power would be a global gamechanger, and everyone is going to want to have their hands on it.

That said, on the country to country, village to village level, there will be a lot of work to do, and it probably won’t look much different than the work that needs to be done without the magic energy. Roads need building. A generation of high school and college educated people need to enter the workforce. Banking systems need to be overhauled. Health care systems need to be strengthened. Telecommunications infrastructure needs building. Export-based businesses need to happen. Militaries and police need training and equipment.

Corruption is a problem, but corruption is usually a coping device for weak governments. In some cases, those governments need better tools to help them build legitimacy and maintain order. In others, sometimes a country just has stuff they probably need to fight out before they come together as a nation. In any case, a lot of countries will have to go through that process.

Anyway, a lot of this work is already happening now. If the free power brings job, it may go faster.

8

Wouldn’t there be some risk of wars to seize the core-tap site?

9

A bit of a history lesson: I took community college classes in Honolulu for a year or two, where they require World History classes rather than U S History classes. I took World History 1A (or whatever they called it), which covered from the beginning of recorded history times through the early beginnings of the Renaissance.

The one lesson that most impressed me, that I remember to this day (25 years later):

Culture is persistent!

One of those late medieval empires (Holy Roman? Carolingian? Whatever) ruled much of Europe for 700-some years before collapsing. They suppressed all the local peoples’ cultures — language, religions, modes of dress, festivals, all that — and imposed the culture of the imperial hub instead.

When that empire fell after 700-some years, all the more local cultures began to re-emerge: The languages, the religions, the dress, everything. Somehow, all that was never totally lost even after 700 years!

That has stuck in my mind ever since.

Now look at a more recent example: The Soviet Union tried to meld and homogenize a wide collection of lands, peoples, and cultures. That experiment only lasted for a puny 70 years, but that was long enough for most of an entire generation to die off. Now, the original lands and peoples have all re-emerged, with their original cultures, more or less.

Now look at a whole bunch of lands that have cultures that we “civilized peoples” would call, uh, … problematical. It’s ingrained in their cultures. We can’t give them our Western-style democracies and capitalist economies just by e-mailing them our Constitution along with some essays about separation of powers. We can’t even teach them our ways of life simply by setting up schools for a generation of kids and sending the Peace Corps volunteers to teach there.

Other cultures have very different concepts of . . . just about everything! And that will persist.

Dumping a shitload of energy resources in their laps isn’t going to address any of that.

10

An unlimited supply of “free” energy dropped anywhere in the world would almost certainly result in the current global powers going to war over it. Look at the geopolitical chess surrounding oil, which is significantly less convenient and strategically important than infinite free energy.