For the past couple of months, I have been reading about people in the Western Countries who live off-grid. I was interested because what they call off-grid is the normal life in Africa.
While reading the stories I thought of my grandpa who is 110 years old. He has lived off-grief for all of his life. He has never lived in a house connected to the main power supply or piped water. This is now the true definition of living off grid.
Most of the people feataured on the stories of off-grid living have at times lived in normal homes with electricity and water. They made a choice to live off-grid. In African living off-grid is not a choice you make, it is fate.
In many instances you find entire villages not connected to electricity of piped water. The locals have to fetch water from springs and use solar panels and batteries to access electricity of charging their phones and lighting.
Those who live off-grid in Africa could also prefer to one day be connected to the grid for electricity and water. In fact, they would enjoy that but now that is not possible. It is a privilege for those who are connected.
Some homes are off-grid just because the utility companies are no committed to connect them to power. A few days a go a Neighbour told me that a power line runs near his home and the utility company comes every year to clear trees along the line but they have never thought of connecting the home to the mains electricity.
All these challenges are connected to poor governance. Taxpayers money is not doing what it is supposed to do. The national government is using this tax money to buy fuel-guzzlers for senior government officials or construct places for the president and the County governors. These are necessary but not in the scale at which it is done.
For instance, the president of a poor African country does not need a fleet of 100 fuel-guzzlers to move around the country. It is a high time we go for a lean government. The President of Brazil has already shown the way by closing some of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies whose functions often overlap. That is how a state can find money to connect Africans to the grid.
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