Sparklines
An Effort to Scale Solar in Africa Was a Victim of Its Own Success
A program to help low-income countries adopt solar drove costs down but didn’t gain wide traction. The problem was baked into its design, an analyst says.
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The late 2010s was an era of ever-cheaper solar power, thanks to falling equipment costs and near-zero interest rates. Every year, there were new record-low purchase prices for electricity from large solar projects. Many global records were set in the Middle East, but 2016 saw an important regional one in Zambia.