Installation of a solar panel on the roof of an isolated rural house in the southern province of Chubut, during the winter in Argentina's Patagonia region. Renewable sources provide energy to isolated communities that previously could only be supplied by diesel engines, which are more expensive, less efficient and generate greenhouse gas emissions. CREDIT: Permer

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 19 2022 (IPS)

When asked about the impact of incorporating solar energy at the school he runs in Atraico, a remote rural area in the Patagonian steppe in southern Argentina, Claudio Amaya Gatica is unequivocal: “Life has changed, not only for the school but for the whole community.”

The Atraico rural school has been one of the beneficiaries of the Renewable Energy in Rural Markets Project (Permer), a government initiative that for more than 20 years has been supplying electricity to rural communities and towns that are far from the national grid."Electricity means independence for people. Especially for women, who usually take care of the goats. With the solar-powered electric fences for goat pastures, women can have more time to devote to themselves or their children." -- Graciela Leguizamón

Only about 20 families live in Atraico, which in the Mapuche indigenous language means “Water behind the stone”, and is located in the municipality of Ingeniero Jacobacci, in the southern province of Río Negro.

The scarcity of water is precisely the main underlying factor of life there, where the villagers raise goats and sheep. Few take the risk of raising cows, which require more and better pastures – not abundant due to the lack of rainfall.

The Atraico school used to have intermittent electricity from a gas generator. Since 2021, when solar panels with batteries began to operate, it has had 24-hour electric power, which also allows it to sustain internet connectivity, benefiting the entire community.

“Of our 15 students, nine are boarders because they can’t go home and come back every day, since they live far from the school,” Amaya Gatica tells IPS from Ingeniero Jacobacci, the municipal capital city, some 35 kilometers from Atraico, where he lives. “Now we can have a refrigerator and washing machine. And the kids can go to the bathroom at night and turn on the light by pressing a switch, which is a new sensation for them.”

“The neighbors come to use the internet. It is nice to see the local residents on horseback sending messages with their cell phones that until recently were sent by radio or by little notes that someone took to the addressees,” he adds.

A small livestock farmer in the municipality of La Cumbre, in the Argentine province of Córdoba, checks the small solar panel on his solar-powered electric cattle fence. Electrification allows better management of domestic animals and pastures. CREDIT: Permer

Guaranteeing a right

The first phase of the Permer program ran from 2000 to 2015. The second, thanks to a 170 million dollar loan from the World Bank, was to run from 2015 to 2020.

As the government acknowledged, implementation of the program lagged between 2016 and 2019, when only 15 percent of the credit was spent. As a result, it was about to collapse in 2020, when the energy ministry renegotiated with the World Bank and obtained an extension until 2022.

Since then, the awarding of tenders for works in different communities has picked up speed, with the two-pronged objective of improving the quality of life of the dispersed rural population and reducing environmental impacts with the promotion of renewable energies.

According to data from the energy ministry, investments for 163 million dollars have already been made, are in progress or are in the bidding stage. Between the renewable energy generating equipment already installed and the projects under implementation, Permer has reached 41,510 homes and 681 schools, benefiting a total of 345,712 people, according to official figures.

“The program serves a part of the population that lives in remote areas of Argentina and not only lacks electricity from the grid, but also has other needs. The arrival of electric power opens up another panorama for these populations,” Permer’s general coordinator, Luciano Gilardón, told IPS.

The official said that due to the size of Argentina, which with a territory of 2,780,000 square kilometers is the eighth largest country in the world, it is not economically feasible for the national power grid to reach the smallest and most remote communities, so on-site isolated generation is the only possible solution.

“Traditionally, small diesel-fueled engines were installed, which performed poorly. Since 2000, renewable energies started to become cheaper and then they became viable not only for more efficient generation, but also to contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” adds Gilardón in Buenos Aires.

A family poses in front of their home equipped with a solar panel in Potrero de Uriburu, an isolated rural area in the northwestern Argentine province of Salta. The Renewable Energy in Rural Markets Project provides electricity to homes, schools and public offices in remote areas not reached by the national grid. CREDIT: Permer

Energy that brings independence

In addition to homes and schools, Permer beneficiaries include remote public institutions such as primary health care centers, border posts and shelters in national parks.

The program has also been used for agriculture and livestock by small farming and indigenous communities, in the form of solar pumps to extract water from wells and solar-powered electric fence energizers for pastures.

There are 1,500 solar-powered electric cattle pastures in operation and this month the energy ministry awarded a company the supply and installation of another 2,633, in 11 provinces. Fencing the pastures is intended to improve and increase grazing land, reduce losses, protect crops and protect livestock from poaching.

The National Institute of Agricultural Technology (Inta), a public research institution active in rural areas throughout the country, participates in the identification of beneficiaries, the distribution of equipment for productive uses and training in its use.

Graciela Leguizamón, an agricultural engineer and Inta researcher in the province of Santiago del Estero, explains that in many areas of this province in the northern region of Chaco it is very difficult to think of massive public policies for access to electricity and drinking water, since there are rural families whose nearest neighbor is up to four kilometers away.

“Life is rough in those places. Sometimes people travel 15 or 20 kilometers to charge their cell phone batteries. Electricity makes life more friendly, allows children and young people to study, and makes people want to stay in the countryside,” Leguizamón tells IPS from Quimilí, a town in that province.

“Electricity means independence for people. Especially for women, who usually take care of the goats. With the solar-powered electric fences for goat pastures, women can have more time to devote to themselves or their children,” she adds.

Electricity for indigenous peoples

The largest project that Permer has undertaken is in the Luracatao valley, located in the Puna ecoregion in the northwest of Argentina, at an altitude of 2,700 meters above sea level. Some 350 indigenous families of the Diaguita and Calchaquí peoples live there, dispersed in nine communities that use candles or kerosene lanterns at night.

A solar park is under construction in the valley that will have an installed capacity of 1.25 MW, with batteries to store the electricity, plus the infrastructure for distributing the electric power because the communities are spread out along 42 kilometers. There are also plans to install a diesel engine for when weather conditions do not permit the generation of solar energy.

The budget, according to information from the government of the province of Salta, is 6.5 million dollars.

“It is a project that, because of its cost, is impossible for a municipality to undertake, and the national and Salta provincial governments have been promising this since the 1980s,” says Mauricio Abán, the mayor of Seclantás, a municipality in the Luracatao valley.

“In recent years, different possibilities for generating electricity with renewable sources were studied, including hydroelectric, thanks to a river in the valley. But in the end it was decided that the best option was solar, because the radiation is very good all year round,” he tells IPS from his home town.

“Today we see the columns and cables being installed and that a project that seemed like it would never arrive is starting to become reality,” he adds.

A satellite promotion in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that reads, "Space is Ours". Credit: Gustav Cappaert/IPS

By Gustav Cappaert and Chris Lewis
EL PALOMAR, Bolivia, Jun 23 2014 (IPS)

Maria Eugenia Calle, a local official in this Andean agricultural community, recently saw the Internet for the first time.

Her hometown of El Palomar will host one of about 1,500 telecommunications centres that the Bolivian government plans to open this year in rural areas. They will be served by Tupac Katari 1, a Bolivian satellite launched from China late last year.

Socialist President Evo Morales claims that the satellite will make Internet, cell phone service, distance education programmes and over 100 television channels available to everyone in this vast, sparsely populated country.Because Bolivia is landlocked, undersea fibre optic cables do not reach the country, so Bolivians settle for some of the lowest speeds and most expensive connections in the world. Hopes for the satellite are high.

In El Palomar’s yet-to-be-opened telecom centre, Calle and a small group of onlookers watched as a reporter booted up a computer to test the signal.

“Go to the United States. Show us the White House. Search for Toyota. Search for Real Madrid,” they suggested.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, and also among the least connected. Only 7.4 percent of inhabitants have access to the Internet at home, by far the fewest on the continent. Because Bolivia is landlocked, undersea fibre optic cables do not reach the country, so Bolivians settle for some of the lowest speeds and most expensive connections in the world. Hopes for the satellite are high.

“It’s a dream, isn’t it?” said Calle, 40, El Palomar’s secretary of education. “I’m happy that my children are going to be able to communicate with the United States, other countries – or here in Bolivia, with La Paz, Cochabamba,” she said.

With a population of just 10 million and a modest national budget, Bolivia is a strange fit among the 45 nations with their own communications satellite, which are typically either wealthy, heavily populated, or both. However, an increasing number of developing nations are making the investment. In the next two years, Angola, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka will launch their own satellites.

Rural areas bring special challenges for Internet expansion. The cost of installing and maintaining equipment and training people to use new technology is higher farther from cities, said Francisco Proenza, an ICT scholar and visiting professor of Political Science at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

While the use of mobile phones has increased dramatically, the Internet has lagged behind. In rural Peru, for example, 62 percent of rural households own a mobile phone, while just 7 percent of those living in rural areas make use of the Internet

After a 2009 revision, Bolivia’s constitution guaranteed access to basic services including water, electricity, and telecommunications. In addition to the satellite, the Bolivian government has opened over 300 rural telecentres and offered incentives to telecommunications companies willing to build infrastructure in rural zones.

According to Ivan Zambrana, director of the Bolivian Space Agency, a national satellite is the most cost-effective way of providing access across Bolivia’s diverse rural terrain, which includes mountains, tropical rainforest and desert. It is also a means of protecting Bolivia’s communication infrastructure from political factors that could restrict access, like the United States’ embargo against ally Cuba.

Bolivia’s Ministry of Communications has marketed the satellite aggressively. The agency created a television advertisement, a Facebook and Twitter campaign, and an Android app to promote the project. In the months surrounding the satellite’s launch, billboards reading “Tupac Katari, Your Star” and “Communications Decolonized” were placed in major urban areas throughout the country.

“When we think of Bolivia, we don’t think of technology, we think of rural poverty, but Bolivia has changed,” said Robert Albro, an anthropologist at the American University in Washington who focuses on Bolivia.

Despite the fanfare, sceptics of the satellite argue that Bolivia’s priorities are misplaced, especially with alternatives available.

El Palomar, a rural town a few hours from La Paz, Bolivia. Credit: Chris Lewis/IPS

Many other countries, including neighbouring Peru, have extended access to rural areas by subsidising the use of existing satellites. Google and Facebook are each considering a fleet of low-flying drones that would provide worldwide Internet connectivity. Until now, Bolivia has spent 10 million dollars annually to lease satellite capacity from foreign providers.

To finance Tupac Katari, Bolivia took out a 300 million dollar loan from the Chinese Development Bank, which the government claims will be repaid by satellite revenues within 15 years.

“It puzzles me that countries like Bolivia are launching their own satellites,” said Heather Hudson, professor of public policy at the University of Alaska. According to Hudson, existing satellite coverage could meet rural Bolivia’s needs. “It’s like 20 or 25 years ago, when there was a wave among other countries, you had to have your own airline,” she said.

Meanwhile there are concerns about misplaced priorities. “Our priority is improving the conditions of nutrition, water and the environment,” said Isidro Paz Nina, national coordination secretary of the Movimiento Sin Miedo, a party looking to unseat President Morales in November elections. “The satellite isn’t bad, but we want people to not have to worry about suffering for lack of food.”

Delays and miscommunication have also brought frustration. “The government said that with the Tupac Katari satellite antenna, cell phones, television, the channels and all that would improve. Up until now, it hasn’t been seen,” said Victor Canabini Quispe, a 51-year-old in El Palomar. “I hope the government doesn’t deceive us,” he added.

Meanwhile, the public opening of the telecentre in El Palomar has been postponed due to delays in training a community member to run the centre and disputes over who will pay for the inauguration ceremony.

If the satellite project succeeds, it could have a big impact on life in rural Bolivia. The satellite will be a “window to the world” for children in rural areas, according to Zambrana, the Bolivian Space Agency chief. He said that many Bolivian children living in high altitude climates have never seen a tree in their lives, and will see one for the first time through satellite-delivered images.

In five years, Bolivia “will be more modern, better connected, with more educated citizens. We’re going to be a little richer – or a little less poor,” he commented.

The message is one that is resonating in at least one remote part of Bolivia – San Juan de Rosario, a small community in Bolivia’s arid southwest, and a planned telecentre site.

Gregoria Oxa Cayo owns a hotel here for tours visiting Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flats, but by necessity she lives four hours away in the larger town of Uyuni. She grew up in San Juan and her parents still live here, but she needs Internet access to run her hotel and travel agency, and there is none in the isolated desert town.

“If there was Internet here, I would live here,” she said.

A farmer in Woliyta area of Ethiopia. Concern is growing that not enough is being done to engage Africa’s youth - it’s largest workforce - in food production Credit: Ed McKenna/IPS

By Matthew Newsome
TUNIS/ADDIS ABABA, Apr 2 2014 (IPS)

Ketsela Negatu is the son of an Ethiopian goat farmer living close to the country’s capital, Addis Ababa, who refuses to follow in his father’s footsteps. The 19-year-old has negative perceptions about the family profession after seeing the dim prospects a farming livelihood has offered his father. 

“I will go to the city and try and find work. I don’t know what I will do but I want to find a job that pays more money so I can live a good life,” he told IPS."We will also lose the young who want to be connected and communicate via phones and the Internet if these needs [for reliable power] are not met.” -- Cheikh Ly, secretary of the FAO regional conference

But Ketsela’s thinking is just like that of other young people on the continent as poor financial returns and unglamorous prospects of Africa’s rural economy are spurring young people to leave the fields and migrate to urban centres.

And concern is growing that not enough is being done to engage Africa’s largest workforce – its youth – in food production as they are key to safeguarding food security on the continent, eliminating hunger and accessing global food markets.

“There is not enough stimulus for young people to participate in agriculture in African countries. The young farmers need good prices for good products, otherwise we will lose them to the urban areas. Why should they do the hard work and stay poor,” Gebremedhine Birega, Ethiopian representative of the NGO East and South African Food Security Network told IPS.

The share of youth in Africa’s labour force is the highest in the world with approximately 35 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and 40 percent in North Africa, compared to 30 percent in India, 25 percent in China and 20 percent in Europe. World Bank projections indicate that 60 percent of the world’s labour force growth will be in Africa between 2010 and 2050.

Although economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to reach 6.3 percent in 2014, well above the global average, agricultural leaders at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) regional conference held in Tunisa from Mar. 24 to 29 agreed that prodigious growth is not translating fast enough into employment for Africa’s youth.

Gerda Verburg, chairperson of the Committee on World Food Security, told IPS that increased commercialisation of agriculture will harness unemployed youth in rural Africa and create a productive and profitable agricultural sector. It will thus bolster food security and create decent income and employment opportunities for young people.

“We have to try and reverse the rural mentality that says farming is a last option. To prevent this loss of labour we need to look at how to improve the financial prospects of those who work in the agricultural sector.

“Private sector finance and agri-industries are helping to modernise agriculture by creating value adding chains that will pay a farmer more for his labour than the local market,” she said.

Economic growth on the continent, and the changing dietary trends of Africa’s emerging middle class, are also providing attractive and lucrative value chains for young agricultural producers to participate in, FAO director general José Graziano da Silva told IPS.

“There are emerging markets such as aquaculture where we are seeing good potential for growth. More investment in these growing markets will provide greater opportunities for youth employment,” he said.

Greater electrification of rural Africa is also expected to help retain the youth population in the countryside and satisfy an aspiration for a modern lifestyle that features telecommunication and Internet connectivity. Currently, less than 10 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural households have access to electricity.

Cheikh Ly, secretary of the FAO regional conference, told IPS that a major contributing factor behind the decision taken by young people to migrate to urban areas was the lack of electricity in rural Africa.

“Electrification is a key need for Africa’s rural economy. Modern agricultural production is not possible without reliable access to power. We will also lose the young who want to be connected and communicate via phones and the Internet if these needs are not met,” he told IPS.

Greater investment in African agriculture seemed a fait accompli when African leaders met in Maputo, Mozambique in 2003 to commit a minimum of 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture and to lifting agricultural growth to six percent of GDP per annum by 2008.

However, of Africa’s 54 countries, only nine – Ghana, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mali, Ethiopia, Niger, Senegal, Cape Verde and Guinea – managed to uphold these commitments.

Low investment is causing low productivity and thwarting Africa’s agricultural sector, which employs close to 60 percent of Africa’s labour force but accounts for only 25 percent of the continent’s GDP. A deficit of political willpower from African leaders is delaying agricultural expansion on the continent, says Action Aid International’s David Adama.

“Empty words won’t feed empty stomachs. African governments must follow through on their promises and provide more money for agriculture and ensure it is better targeted to help the millions of smallholder farmers who make up most of their citizens and produce most of Africa’s food,” he told IPS.

The potential for the lucrative engagement of Africa’s youth in agriculture should be within grasp. Africa boasts over 50 percent of the world’s fertile and unused land, while foreign investment in African agriculture is expected to exceed 45 billion dollars in 2020, according to World Bank statistics.

However, Africa’s youth are yet to feel the pull of any new “agricultural renaissance” on the continent.

“I would stay and work in the countryside but only if things got better here; unless they do, I will leave for the city and see if there is something better,” Ketsela said.

While most Zimbabweans are now informal traders, it is very difficult for the economy to grow and create more development. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Michelle Chifamba
Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

More than three decades after Zimbabwe’s independence, the idea of developing its rural areas seems to have been laid to rest, as points intended for development have been turned into beer outlets, which seem to be more lucrative than industry.

But across the country, those in rural areas are calling for the revival of growth points, the term for the areas set aside for development, even as this southern African nation’s government admitted in January that it had no money to pay for its upcoming general elections.

According to analysts, growth points were meant to develop into towns, complete with their own industries and housing estates. Their purpose was to provide employment in rural areas and improve the local economy, without forcing people to migrate to large cities and towns to find work.

“During the 1980s many growth points were seeded by the government. Investors, mainly in the form of commercial businessmen, were helped to put up structures and start viable businesses, either as individuals or as co-operatives,” Wisedom Ncube, a sociologist from the University of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“It seems that most growth points are failing to attract meaningful investment except for the building of a few government departments and Grain Marketing Board silos, which have gradually become white elephants,” he said.

People IPS spoke to said that even though the government was in financial trouble, it needed to do something to revive growth points across the country. In January Minister of Finance Tendai Biti told reporters that the country only had 217 dollars left in its public bank account after paying civil servants.

James Mazazi, the village headman in Zvimba, Mashonaland West Province, in central Zimbabwe, is one of those who hold that opinion.

“As years go by, there have not been any meaningful changes at the centres three decades after independence. Pubs are still popular as they were back in the day. Many of our children have crossed the boarders in search of better prospects because the shops that are opened no longer get any assistance from government (to grow their business) and they have remained general dealers,” he told IPS.

Mazazi said that no real development had occurred.

“The government promised to bring investment and create jobs for our youths, but over the years nothing credible has happened and our youths continue to rely heavily on farming as a form of employment,” he said.

And in Zvimba, where the rainfall is erratic and the quality of the soil poor, this is not a guaranteed way to earn a living.

“Here in Zvimba the farming is not reliable. It is even more difficult to make a living as a result,” said Mazazi.

Zimbabwe and its people have suffered from decades of economic and political turmoil, which gradually caused many manufacturing companies to shut down in the major cities of Harare, Bulawayo and Gweru. Between 2003 and 2009, the country had one of the worst rates of hyperinflation in the world and its year on year inflation was reported as 231 percent.

This was compounded by an ailing rail and air system. Eventually, growth points faced neglect as they were never developed to serve their intended purposes.

However, dotted across the country, vast acres of land that were intended to be growth points lie dormant.

“The concept of growth points was mooted by the Zimbabwean government in the 1980s as a means to decongest cities and towns. This was done mainly to curb the rural-to-urban migration through employment creation and the availing of basic services to people in rural areas. Almost three decades later, most of the growth points are undeveloped with beer outlets being the most lucrative businesses,” University of Zimbabwe-based rural and urban planner, and analyst, Innocent Chakanyuka, told IPS.

A rural councillor from Mrewa, Mashonaland East Province, Mathew Nyawasha, said the youth were suffering in poverty due to unemployment despite the potential for job creation at growth point centres.

“If the growth points are developed into industries and employment is created, most of our youth who are now living as refugees in foreign lands might decide to come back and have a better future here where they can live closer to their families,” Nyawasha told IPS.

Silvester Candiero, headman for Nhongo village in Gokwe, a small town in Midlands Province, told IPS that cotton ginneries and tobacco sales offices should be located at growth points. This, he said, would save farmers the tiresome journey to Harare and the hassles that are associated with selling tobacco leaves.

“Tobacco farmers travel considerable distances to Harare and some will be stranded in the capital were they spend weeks or months without any roofs over their heads. After getting paid most of the farmers are swindled by the thieves and money mongers from Harare so they are broke by the time they return,” said Candiero.

Economists have attributed the failure to improve growth points to the current and prevailing economic conditions. They believe that, to some extent, the government-induced, fast-track land redistribution process could have triggered underdevelopment. Over 3,000 mostly white commercial farmers were thrown off their land beginning in 2000.

“While most people are now informal traders, it is very difficult for the economy to grow and create more development,” Tendayi Muchemedza, an economist with mining consultancy Environmental Eagles, told IPS.

“The economy is sliding down – instead of growing forward we are shifting backwards. Farming has shifted from commercial to subsistence farming, and there are no industries and the small shops, which remain open at growth points, are general dealers. There is no growth in the country at large and so we cannot expect growth at the growth points,” added Muchemedza.