Ever since the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, announced his initiative to provide power to help combat electricity blackouts in most African Countries progress has been made. The 7 Billion Funds pledged from the initiative, dubbed Power Africa, will be distributed over five years from 2013.

As an African living in one of the electricity deprived nations and as an environmental leader in my community, I find myself excited at such generous efforts.  This is the lifeline that families need to meet their most basic needs, and it's the connection that's needed to plug Africa into the grid of the global economy.

Late last month he reaffirmed these efforts that the US will partner with African nations in, in bring electricity to many households during his visits to Kenya and Ethiopia.

On Tuesday the third of August he addressed again some of Africa's future leaders (YALI fellows) at the Town Hall. Again Mr Obama touched on some climate change issues and the YALI fellow also raised some important questions pertaining to climate change.

Below are some highlights on what the US president talked about.


"This generation has to understand that climate change is going to be one of the critical issues that you face.  Now, oftentimes you'll hear people say, well, environmental issues, climate change, we don't have time to worry about that right now because we have much more urgent issues we have to educate our children, we have to feed people, we have to develop maybe later we can worry about environmental issues which I understand why a lot of African countries and poorer countries in Asia or Latin America or other places would say that, because historically, that?s basically what the United States and developed countries did.  

The United States used to be terribly polluted.  If you went to Los Angeles, you couldn't it was like Beijing is now.  It was very hard to breathe if you ran outside.  You had lakes and rivers that were so polluted that one of them caught fire.  (Laughter.)  That's serious that's some pollution there.  The same is true in London when London was first developing during the Industrial Revolution, because of all the coal that was being burned, and the soot.  

Here's the problem.  Whether it is fair or not, the issue of climate change is not like traditional environmental issues in the sense that's it's just isolated in one area.  Global climate change will affect everybody.  And because the changes could be so severe, frankly, the countries that are most likely to be adversely affected are the poorer countries because they have less margin for error."

"...And so, in the same way that you have seen banking and financial transactions off smartphones, cellphones, leapfrogging some of the old ways of doing business in advanced countries, the same has to be true for energy.  And we want to encourage new models.  We are going to be providing the United States and other wealthier countries are going to be providing billions of dollars in money for adaptation and mitigation.  But what's more urgent is how do we create the energy that's needed for Africa's growth and development in a way that does not make the problem worse, but instead makes the problem better.


REFERENCES
For full speech go to... (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/08/03/remarks-president-young-african-leaders-initiative-presidential-summit)
Photo 1:www.thegreendivas.com
Photo 2:http://blog.iese.edu