Barack Obama highlights his ‘Power Africa’ plan

 

Obama also performed a sombre double act with George W  Bush, linking up to remember victims of an embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam in 1998, a day after praising his predecessor’s AIDS programme as a ‘crowning achievement.’ 

The US leader travelled to the Ubungo power plant, repaired with US funds, to bemoan the plight of  70 percent of Africans who lack reliable access to electricity, and to promote his new USD 7 billion effort to help. 

‘All of us have to feel a sense of urgency. If we are going to electrify Africa, we’ve got to do it with more speed,’ Obama said. 

The plan, dubbed ‘Power Africa,’ leverages loan guarantees and private sector finance and aims to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of the population lives in the dark.  It will initially be targeted on Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Tanzania.  Obama also had fun today trying out a device known as a ‘Socketball’ which hides a generator inside a football and can be used to power a light or a cell phone using kinetic energy stored during a kick around. 

The US leader juggled the ball on his foot and his head, and then demonstrated how it could be hooked up to a cell phone. 

‘I thought it was pretty cool,’ he said. 

‘You can imagine this in villages all across the continent.’   Earlier, in an unusual meeting of the exclusive US presidents club on foreign soil, Obama met Bush, pioneer of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) which saved millions of lives, and also treats tuberculosis and malaria.