The energy access challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa has been a stumbling block during the pandemic.
Sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 1 billion people, will also face an additional challenge during the vaccine roll out: energy access. In particular, the region must deal with a huge logistical issue that needs to be addressed: an innovative, effective and climate-friendly cold chain distribution network.Drug companies, Pfizer and BioNTech initially announced that their coronavirus vaccine is more than 90% effective, triggering renewed hope for an end to the global COVID-19 pandemic.72.
There are a few health facilities with the required refrigeration capacity in the region. Secondly, according to the International Energy Agency, close to 60% of health centers have no access to reliable electricity, and nearly 600 million people have no electricity at all in Sub-Saharan Africa. If steps are not taken, the energy challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa will be a stumbling block to effectively controlling the virus. While in the short-term, temporary decentralized energy solutions, such as solar mini-grids with energy storage were used for health centres and COVID-19 isolation centres, there needs to be a long-term plan for dealing with the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and tackling future pandemics.
Researchers say that many of the COVID-19 vaccines being developed will require similar storage temperatures as low as -80C. This will require the development of new cold supply chain systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ultra-cold storage was used for an Ebola vaccine that helped tackle the outbreak in Rwanda and the DRC, but the amounts are a minuscule proportion of what is needed for the coronavirus pandemic. Studying Rwanda’s effective, climate-friendly cold chain model is a step towards expanding this across the region.
Vome_A Well articulated piece from Vome_A Rolling out COViD 19 vaccine across SSA will require sufficient energy. The need to speed up NGN energy sector reforms cannot be over emphasized.
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