Connecting voices and ideas for influence & projects
The Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, organized by Masdar from the 16th to 23rd January 2016, brought more than 32,000 participants from over 170 countries. Over years, the event has become nothing less in importance than the “Davos of energy”. This edition, coming as post-COP21, additionally whistled the real kick-off for the deployment of renewable energy. Continue reading “Abu Dhabi – A “Green Week” in the United Arab Emirates”
At COP21, in the Climate Generations area at Le Bourget on 7 December, experts from The Bridge Tank, the Sustainable Mobility Institute and Renault discussed the issue of electric mobility in India and Brazil, along with the energy, environmental and societal issues it raises. An opportunity for Joël Ruet to unveil our think tank’s original vision of the levers to deploy this technology. Continue reading “Paris COP21 – Deploying electric vehicles in Brazil and India”
On the occasion of the COP21, on 8 December, Joël Ruet, President of The Bridge Tank, and intellectual property lawyer Guillaume Henry presented the report “Sustainable Development and Intellectual Property: Access to Technologies in Emerging Countries” at the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée.
In his presentation, Joël Ruet indicated that “the sites of specialisation are nowadays more and more temporary. This is the great lesson of emergence: the idea of specialisation, the ‘great economic idea’ that has been the basis of trade theory since the end of the 19th century, is becoming, if not moribund, at least dangerous for an economic territory. By the time specialisation is established, the industry has already changed. It is therefore important to promote a potential for rapid redeployment. It is a question of fertilising the diversity of the territories. This could be a role for the state.
Following the involvement of The Bridge Tank in the Akon Lighting Africa project, the Bridge Tank was received by the singer and philanthropist Akon during his visit to Bamako on December 15, 2015. Akon launched his project of electrification of the continent through the development of solar energy.
The Akon Lighting Africa program emerged following Barack Obama’s Power to Africa project, with the involvement of his former campaign advisor Thione Niang. One year after its launch, the promoters of Akon Lighting Africa claim to have created 5,500 indirect jobs.
The initiative, supported by Solektra International, launched in 2014 with $1 billion in funding, plans to electrify several million homes in 40 countries by 2020. More than 100,000 streetlights and 102,000 solar home kits have been installed in 480 localities and 14 countries across the continent. Also, during this conference Akon announced the launch of the Solektra Solar Academy, an engineering training academy in Bamako.
It aims to train engineers in developing a renewable and sustainable electrification of the peripheral districts of Bamako and other important Malian cities thanks to solar energy. The Academy aims to train 200 skilled workers per year. Scheduled to open in January 2016, the academy will provide technical and energy market training but also programs to eradicate poverty.
In the lead up to COP21, The Bridge Tank’s president Joël Ruet attended a dinner at the French Senate with Mrs Hakima El Haité, Minister Delegate in Charge of Environment in Morocco, where COP22 will be hosted in 2016 and, in her words, “continue the line of COP21”. Continue reading “Paris – From the “pro-mitigation COP” to the “pro-adaptation COP””
Emergence is not just industrial or urban. The Bridge Tank outlines a strategy for inclusive growth through the creation-densification of agricultural economic ecosystems forming a diversified rural economy.
In the context of the emergence of urban economies of Asia and Africa, this Policy brief sets out an inclusive growth strategy through the creation-densification of agricultural economic ecosystems forming a truly diversified rural economy, making it possible to ensure food security by generating income. Generalizing successful or ambitious national initiatives, it recommends for developing sub-Saharan Africa and Asia a territorial-level coordination of initiatives already implemented by economic actors at local scales. After the aporia of “development”, emergence re-widens the horizon. Everywhere in the South, it is time to structure a true rural economy.
Read the policy brief here in French.
