Power to the people
Egypt is not a place that lacks sunshine. But it does lack solar energy: Renewable power accounts for less than 1 percent of the energy consumed by the country’s 75 million inhabitants. Moreover, to acquire solar capacity, Egypt would have to import all the solar panels, since it currently lacks manufacturing facilities for photovoltaic cells.Nadia Shalaby would like to change that. Shalaby is currently one of 35 fellows at MIT’s Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship, which supports “bottom-up” business enterprises in the developing world. At the Legatum Center, she is spending the 2010-2011 academic year developing a business project intended to jump-start the Egyptian solar-manufacturing industry. “This land is fertile ground for solar energy,” says Shalaby, who largely grew up in Egypt. Building solar units in Egypt would have two large benefits, Shalaby contends. First, it would lower prices. “Otherwise you’re importing technology into a developing country which cannot...