Electrifying Sierra Leone
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bringing electricity to his village for the first time, we speak with Jeremiah Thoronka in Sierra Leone about the challenges of energy inequality in the country. As a teenager, using kinetic energy, Jeremiah changed the lives of hundreds of people – we speak to them to talk about the difference between the two worlds – and why having more light often means more hours to earn money, in a country where economic success lags behind its neighbours. As three quarters of people in the world with no access to electricity live in Africa, UN energy representative Damilola Ogunbiyi explains why Africa energy poverty persists, despite some pockets of success, and answers why it takes ‘heroes’ like Jeremiah to change the lives of people, and why leaders should be stepping up.
(Image: Lightning storm approaches Freetown, Sierra Leone. Credit: Michael Duff / Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:07.4 | Three quarters of the world living without electricity are in Africa. |
| 0:13.2 | Is it like we don't exist? Is it like nobody care about what is happening in this particular community? |
| 0:21.0 | We hear from the Sierra Leone who as a teenager powered his entire village using kinetic energy. |
| 0:27.9 | You must be the hero of that community. |
| 0:31.3 | I don't see myself as a hero. |
| 0:33.8 | I see myself as just a random guy who don't only talk, but then also try to see how you can |
| 0:41.1 | use the skills that you've acquired over time in making sure like you solve the problem. |
| 0:45.4 | So what would it take to solve the world's access to energy? Is it just about money? |
| 0:51.2 | We are looking for at least $40 billion, which is not a lot of money in the global |
| 0:55.7 | arena, but we have barely $4 billion coming in. I mean, if you think about it, the developed world |
| 1:01.4 | found $17 trillion to spend on COVID. In today's Business Daily, we ask the question, why is it so |
| 1:09.1 | often down to these young innovators to solve the planet's energy |
| 1:13.5 | crisis? How do the world's leaders need to step up? |
| 1:24.8 | That's the sound of Makawa Village, around 200 miles north of Frita in the Bombali district of Sierra Leone. |
| 1:32.7 | There is no grid electricity there. |
| 1:35.8 | It's where 21-year-old Jeremiah Theronka comes from. |
| 1:39.6 | You have to battle with the lack of access to power. |
| 1:43.2 | You have to battle with environmental related challenges that to power. You have to battle with environmental |
| 1:45.1 | related challenges that comes from climate change, like flooding, you know, bushfire, etc. |
| 1:49.9 | So that's the kind of community that I grew up and it was tough. |
| 1:54.5 | When Jeremiah was 15 years old, he got a scholarship to go to one of the best schools in the |
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