Energy shortage is commonplace in Africa, yet the continent benefits from hours of sunshine daily - can the solution lie in solar power?
Scientists are now looking at the potential of a process called Concentrating Solar Power to generate large amounts of energy, that can feed into a grid.
The Science
This technology uses fields of mirrors to reflect sunlight on to a water tank, feeding into a steam-powered turbine.
It is still very expensive to deploy - the biggest prototypes are located in the United States and Spain - and would cost billions of dollars to develop on a continent-wide scale.
To find out more about the potential in Africa for this source of energy, Pete Lewenstein spoke to Dr Gerry Wolff, an engineer and coordinator of Trec-UK, an organisation that supports research into and development of Concentrating Solar Power.
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