africa – Progress in Research

The end of hydropower in Africa

Posted on 25/08/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Most of the new dams proposed all over Africa should not be built, according to a study published in Science magazine carried out by researchers from the Politecnico di Milano with colleagues from the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the World Resources Institute in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Authors include Angelo Carlino, former PhD student at the Politecnico di Milano and now a postdoc at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford, Professor Andrea Castelletti, lecturer in Natural Resource Management at the Politecnico, and Matteo Giuliani, researcher at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico.

The research used a very detailed energy model to identify the most cost-effective combination of energy sources with which African countries could meet the growing demand for electricity until 2050 and, in particular, which plants could be a clever investment and which should instead not be built.

According to the analysis, up to 67% of possible future hydropower plants in Africa are not worth the investment, mainly due to the fact that hydropower will soon no longer be economically competitive as compared to solar power or (to a lesser extent) wind power, the costs of which have fallen at an unprecedented rate over the past ten years. However, especially in the Congo, Niger and Nile Basins, there are projects that are worth implementing in the short term, provided they are well planned and their harmful environmental effects are minimised.

The study also points out that further investments will be needed to mitigate the effects on hydropower of prolonged droughts, which are likely to worsen due to climate change. This is another reason why solar energy will emerge as the most appealing technology in the long run, to be prioritised in most African countries.

The results of the study are generally good news for the environment: it means that fewer dams will be built and therefore many rivers will be able to maintain their natural course.

The study published on Science magazine

Photo © DAFNE Project | Politecnico di Milano ＋ ATEC-3D

Water wars: causes and possible solutions

Posted on 15/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The control of water resources, like oil today, could be the cause of wars in the world in the near future.

The prestigious journal Nature Sustainability has published a study conducted by a group of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano who investigated the phenomenon by analysing, in particular, the socio-hydrological characteristics of the numerous conflicts that have arisen in the last 20 years in the Lake Chad region, in central Africa.

The research showed how conflicts tend to be associated with specific and complex conditions, which in turn deal with the socio-economic value of water as a form of livelihood, especially in agriculture, and with the effects that human use of water has on the accessibility of this resource.
For a better understanding of these conflicts, the researchers argue, it is necessary to establish measures of water availability that take into account the importance of water for human sustenance and the mechanisms that are generated when a resource is used unequally.

Working in this way it’s possible to produce quantitative and qualitative descriptions of particular environmental “patterns” associated with specific conflict dynamics
Nikolas Galli, researcher of the Glob3ScienCE group (Global Studies on Sustainable Security in a Changing Environment) group of the Politecnico di Milano

The study Socio-hydrological features of armed conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin is authored by Nikolas Galli, Ilenia Epifani, Davide Danilo Chiarelli and Maria Cristina Rulli of the Politecnico di Milano and Jampel Dell’Angelo of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

The study online

AMBITION: supporting education of young professionals across Europe and Africa

Posted on 05/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano has been awarded an Erasmus+ grant to develop the project AMBITION. The project will last until mid-2025 and has been funded with 400.000 euros.

The Erasmus+ AMBITION – AMBassadors for sustainable transITION’s will support the education of a future generation of qualified young professionals trained across Europe and Africa, well equipped with the tools to promote a culture of sustainable development and activate research in this field.

This goal will be achieved through the development of a Joint Honours Programme in technical disciplines for talented PhD candidates who wish to become ambassadors for Sustainable Development.

Specific aims are planned on three levels.

Institutional level: to co-design and implement a Joint Honours Programme for PhD talented candidates across the partner university as an asset for international cooperation to boost the contribution of multidisciplinary science and competences in the sustainable transition in both EU and AU universities.

People level: to enrich the capacity of PhD candidates and provide them with a proper enabling environment in term of skills and platform, to act as science ambassadors to boost sustainable innovation in the EU-AU countries partner universities.

Strategic level: to consolidate PhD education as a strategic asset for countries and regions since it fosters the role of science diplomacy and responsible research, to create an added value for society and policy makers when dealing with the global and just sustainable transition.

AMBITION is the first joint initiative developed by the IDEA League Expert Working Group “Partnerships with African Universities and Institutions”, that aims to strengthen and expand IDEA League’s collaborations with African universities by promoting and addressing the global challenges as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals.

The partners in the project are: Politecnico di Milano (coordinator), RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), TU Delft (Netherlands), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), Strathmore University (Ghana), and ETH Zurich (Switzerland) as an associate partner.

THE PROJECT TEAM