In this regard, measures need to be developed to quickly put Africa’s high potential economic growth on a path that is environmentally sustainable. Deliberate actions need to be taken in successfully transferring environmentally friendly technologies to Africa. A case in point is the use of solar technology, for which achievements thus far are promising. Most of Africa is endowed with solar energy, and transforming it into usable energy would substitute the widespread use of wood fire energy by the majority of the continent’s population. In addition, because this is proven technology no more resources need to be devoted to Research and Development. Further, solar energy circumvents the costs related to the generation and distribution of yet another clean source of energy, hydroenergy. In addition to generation, distribution of hydroelectricity presents Africa with a unique challenge of supply network or grids due to the vast landscapes that constitute the rural setting where majority of the population resides. This is part of the wider infrastructural constraint that the continent is yet to overcome. 4. Africa and the world economy  In the real sector, a number of African exports experienced an overall increase in prices in 2003. International gold prices increased, much to the benefit of the continents top producers, South Africa and Ghana. Likewise, oil prices increased during the same period leading to higher revenues for countries such as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad (ADB, 2003).
This observation, which came to be known as Moore’s law, still holds. In other words, microchip capacity is being doubled every 18 months. What is perhaps even more relevant is that there does not seem to be any reason why Moore’s law should not continue to be valid a good way into the future. Computer manufacturers are accordingly achieving a rapid improvement in productivity that will last for a good time to come. Provided demand for computers is sufficiently strong, it looks as though the computer-producing sector will become successively larger and make a growing contribution to GDP, the indicator we use for a country’s total income. In simple terms one can say that if an economic sector expands rapidly and also achieves high productivity growth, it will generate an acceleration of the total economy’s average productivity growth. Put differently, the expanding sector weighs increasingly heavily in the measurement of total productivity, defined as GDP per hour worked, and all else equal, this raises average productivity. This is probably one explanation for the acceleration of productivity growth in the United States in the 1990s, which gave rise to the concept of a “new economy”. In time, moreover, as computers and the new technology are introduced in various ways in other parts of the economy, productivity growth will also pick up there. So it is not just the production of computers that becomes more efficient; computer applications in other fields heighten the efficiency of processes there as well. The effects spread through the economy.