In the Sahel, solar power can help ward off extremism: official

Barcelona (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Grinding poverty and climate change are pushing communities in West Africa’s Sahel region into the arms of extremist groups like Boko Haram, but providing people with clean energy could help slow that trend, said a top international official.

Rachel Kyte, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, set up by the United Nations, learned on a trip to Niger this month how women and girls are being recruited by Islamist militants who offer them work, food and other essentials.

Kyte, who serves as the U.N. Secretary-General’s special representative on energy access, said Boko Haram “is moving into the provision of basic social services”.

At the same time, in impoverished Niger, recurring and more intense drought “is absolutely punishing”, she said.

The Islamist group is based in northeast Nigeria but active in other West African states.

Kyte said villagers needed better ways to grow crops to feed their families and boost incomes to make them less susceptible to the extremists targeting them.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed, who visited Niger with Kyte, last week spelled out the links between climate change stresses and regional insecurity in remarks to the U.N. Security Council.

In rural Niger, where only about 1 percent of people have access to electric power, supplying cheap and green energy - mainly from the sun - could make a difference, Kyte said.

For example, solar pumps could drive simple, efficient irrigation systems, and installing small-scale local grids could power cold storage, enabling villagers to process their crops and earn more money, she noted.
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