
… outside Kigali, in Rwanda, where a combination of government assistance, through President Obama’s Power Africa initiative, and private investment, through Gigawatt Global, has created a crazy futurist solar field that’s boosted Rwanda’s generation capacity by 6 percent and has basically blown my circuits with its possibilities; this array just has to be seen. Europe’s already on board with the idea of clean, green energy, promising to help…
A 21st-century Marshall Plan would also have to get some private-sector skin in the game, not just foreign aid. The U.S. in the 1940s gave loans to struggling businesses, which is still a good idea, but this doesn’t just have to come from governments; there are successful companies across Africa and around the world that could be making investments in the ones that need capital. The private sector has got as much to gain as anyone from helping lagging industries to flourish, growing businesses to grow further, and developing economies to become developed ones. And the private sector, in many ways, has more leverage than multilateral aid agencies in making that happen. It’s got even more leverage when it works in concert with those aid agencies and with national and local governments.