Washington Post: Can the world fight climate change and energy poverty at the same time? – The UN has set two huge energy-related goals for the coming century: to bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people who still don’t have it and to curtail fossil fuel use and keep global warming below 2°C. While daunting goals, they are also in somewhat tension with each other. The first “requires increasing the amount of energy the world uses, including fossil fuels” and the “second requires harnessing cleaner power sources, using energy more efficiently, and even conserving power.” Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative aims to resolve this tension, but at a price tag of $48 billion per year. (Brad Plumer)
The Daily Beast: Women Entrepreneurs in Eurasia, Africa Get $100 Million Boost - In a promising step toward the economic empowerment of women in emerging markets, the Coca-Cola Co. and International Finance Corp. (IFC) on Monday announced a joint initiative that aims to support female entrepreneurship in Eurasia and Africa. The initiative, for which the IFC will utilize its network of local and regional banking institutions to provide financing to women in the Coca-Cola value chain, is already being implemented in Nigeria. (Katie Baker)
NYTimes Dot Earth: Big Social Costs Tallied in Regions with Scant Energy Access – In light of recent reports about the impact of inadequate energy access, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has made “Sustainable Energy for All” a top priority. At the same time, many entrepreneurs and engineers are making energy poverty a priority as well. The “energy quest” of this century has “two faces – one figuring out how the haves can use energy more wisely, the other figuring out how to get the benefits that come with modern energy to the billions without sustainable options right now.” (Andrew Revkin)
Punch: Opinion: Okonjo-Iweala and the economy - Buoyed by mild improvements in economic indices, Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, sees the Nigerian economy as “strong” and its performance “robust.” As Coordinating Minister for the Economy, she gladly welcomes the reported lower inflation rate, the fairly stable exchange rate, modest growth in Gross Domestic Product and higher external reserves of $44.5 billion and Excess Crude Account of $9.6 billion. But the minister’s enthusiasm is cold comfort to businesses beset by high costs, the mass of unemployed youths and every Nigerian confronted by poverty and decrepit infrastructure.
The East African: Uhuru wins count, battle shifts to court - The two weeks between the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as winner of the Kenyan presidential election and the swearing in ceremony, set for March 26, are likely to prove an anxious time for the country and the region as they await court rulings on cases challenging the result. Mr Kenyatta won the presidency after he garnered 6,173,433 votes against his closest rival Raila Odinga’s 5,340,546 votes. He achieved the constitutional requirement of more than 50 per cent of the vote by getting 50.07 per cent (4,100 votes above the 50 per cent mark), against Mr Odinga’s 43.31 per cent.
