While the world is getting ready to voluntarily turn off the lights for an hour, we in Ghana are again getting ready for involuntary power sharing…
In Sweden, there will be a big concert in down town Stockholm and many (most?) companies and municipalities have joined the cause.
In Africa only nine countries are registered. Ghana is not part of the official Earth Hour celebrations one can see from the Earth Hour website. Actually, for West Africa only Nigeria takes part – see the official blog here.
Unofficially, we celebrate earth hour every week, sometimes every day. Africa still produces and consumes much less energy than the rest of the world, and yes, sometimes totally involuntarily. According to this article from the Economist in 2007, Africa generates only 4% of the world’s electricity supply. Three of those percent are generated by, and for, South Africa and the northern African countries – leaving the lion share of Africa to 1% of the world’s generated energy!
We need to save our planet, but lets also stop being naive. We don’t have any electricity to turn off in Ghana!
The amazing picture was borrowed from NASAhere.
Ps. Seems like we will rather spend the hour between 8.30-9.30 PM tonight romancing.
