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The Kingdom of Morocco decisively increased trade and diplomatic interaction with countries of Western and Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-2000s, supplementing Morocco's long-standing foreign policy orientation toward the 'West'. Under the guidance of King Mohammed VI, the country gradually sought regional political rapprochement after several decades of relative isolation. The push for regional integration is taking place across multiple policy fields and goes hand in hand with a more assertive demeanour on the stage of international diplomacy. Environmental sustainability – encompassing renewable energy production and environmental protection measures – is a policy sector on which the autocratic Moroccan regime places special emphasis. This paper traces Morocco's 'green turn', the development of environmental sustainability policy under King Mohammed VI in context of Morocco's general foreign policy realignment. It analyses Morocco's environmental engagement at the foreign policy level in terms of soft power activity and gives tentative insight on Morocco's path of becoming an influential regional player in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of still-low-but-rising levels of motorization and economic growth, increasing social and spatial inequalities, and growing concerns about air pollution and climate change, the formulation and implementation of policies, practices and partnerships that can support an accelerated implementation of sustainable mobility policies is an urgent concern for rapidly developing cities. This paper seeks to contribute to reframing some of the knowledge and methodologies produced in and about cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, through a comprehensive assessment of mobility patterns and accessibility needs within a larger debate about mobility transitions and sustainable development. By deploying a mixed-methods approach that builds upon case-study focus groups and city-wide accessibility and mobility analysis in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, the paper maps travel patterns and their links with structural factors such as urban form, poverty, informality and social identities at the macro, meso and micro levels. The paper also presents evidence from a variety of methods that illustrate the significance of accessibility-centred information and analysis for establishing policy priorities for improving urban mobility and accessibility in the local, African and global contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Sub-Saharan Africa is a passive bystander in the global 'knowledge economy' race. In this race, success hinges on a country's capacity to develop and apply tacit knowledge to production systems, resulting in wealth creation and an enhanced quality of life. This race is currently led by four regions, called knowledge engines, namely, the European Union, East Asia, India and the USA. However, China, Brazil and others are making quiet strides as contenders. Africa's quest to join the race is crippled by complex problems which, arguably, are best solved through the adoption of modern knowledge systems and tools. In this Catch-22 situation, Africa can join the race only through pragmatic regional and global initiatives and resources, which would assist the region to develop the capacity to acquire the knowledge needed to pursue sustainable development. The paper suggests initiatives to radically hasten Africa's pace in the knowledge economy race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates tourism, economic growth, and environmental issues in a multivariate format. Unlike recent research on this topic, a panel data of selected sample nations of sub-Saharan Africa is adopted by using cointegration and panel regression models. The current research discovers both long-run equilibrium and short-run dynamics between economic growth, tourism, energy use, and carbon emissions in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, tourism and energy use show a highly significant direct impact on economic growth. In addition, tourism, energy use, and economic growth yield a highly significant positive effect on carbon emissions. Dissecting the region into oil producers and non-oil producers further suggests that the economic growth of sub-Saharan Africa has been accomplished by strong growth in tourism and energy use. However, there is highly significant evidence that in oil producing countries, CO2emissions are directly affected by energy use and economic growth and not by tourism. For non-oil producing countries, tourism and energy use but not economic growth incur a highly significant positive impact on carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Solar/biogas/diesel hybrid system gives a levelized cost of energy of $0.15 /kWh. • Energy cost for a Solar/biogas/diesel hybrid microgrid competes with grid tariff. • Use of biomass in microgrids provide a sustainable rural electrification template. • Electrification of a disadvantaged area to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. The idea of sustainable cities and communities is a collective goal that runs across intergovernmental programs, like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the African Agenda 2063 strategic framework. However, with several communities in sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of Asia having no access to electricity, this objective is still a "mirage". Developing a resilient energy system for an unelectrified community should involve a thorough assessment and integration of the local energy resources in a decentralized generation and distribution system. For example, technologies that convert the waste generated in the community into biogas should be a part of microgrid systems. This paper thus proposes a microgrid solution for small communities where a combination of waste-to-energy, battery storage, and solar photovoltaic technologies can provide enough energy needed for the sustainable development of local communities. An unelectrified village in Nigeria has been selected as a case study. The energy demand for the village was carefully analyzed as 574 kWh/day. Techno-economic analysis of the hybrid solar PV/biogas/diesel system fit to serve this load was carried out using hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources software. The optimum hybrid system configuration was found to have a net present cost of $436,943 for 25 years with carbon dioxide emission amounting to 4,070 kg/year, compared to the traditional solar/diesel/battery microgrid which will require net present cost of $655,521 and emit 22,648 kg of carbon dioxide annually. Also, the cost of energy from this system is $0.151/kWh which is similar to the average grid tariff in the region. From the breakeven grid distance analysis, it was noted that the proposed solution is much more economical than grid extension for communities above a distance of 2.78 km to the grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of universal access to water and sanitation results in well over a million preventable deaths each year, and in both the water and sanitation sectors, there is critical need for greater sustainability. Objectives of this perspective paper are to distill the foundational components of sustainability in water and sanitation, to analyze the main barriers toward establishing these components, and to suggest feasible solutions for overcoming barriers within the context of rural Sub-Saharan Africa. To identify these key components, we extracted the necessary and universal sustainability factors for rural water and sanitation supplies from existing literature. We identify these components as (1) effective community demand, (2) local financing and cost recovery, and (3) dynamic operation and maintenance. We briefly illustrate with examples from the field how the presence of these components leads to long-term functioning water and sanitation supplies, while lack of these components undermines sustainability. Dynamic operation and maintenance is especially critical, and has largely been overlooked by providers, operators, and managers of water and sanitation supplies. We encourage the research community of engineers and scientists and field practitioners to use these three components as a basis for rigorous inquiry into sustainability of water and sanitation supplies. Ultimately, improving sustainability of water and sanitation supplies will result in salient and lasting gains in health and economic development throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous studies of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), the evidence is still inconclusive and little has been done to capture the issue of environmental sustainability and welfare aspects of growth in the EKC relationship. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate the environment-development linkage under a sustainability-oriented EKC framework in 20 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period from 1990 to 2015. The Common Correlated Effects version of Pooled Mean Group Estimator (CCE-PMG) in the context of error-correction based panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model augmented with cross-sectional averages was employed as a preferred estimation technique. The study also used an appropriate U test to check the presence of genuine inverted U-shaped EKC relationship. The results confirm the existence of a modified EKC hypothesis in SSA, but the linkage depends on the extent of endowment of natural resources. Among the growth-related factors, energy consumption and trade openness are found to have a long run detrimental effect on the environment. The study suggests that country's effort for economic development needs to be accompanied by appropriate policy options to ensure environmental sustainability. • Modified EKC = baseline EKC + Sustainability. • An appropriate U-test was employed to check the presence of genuinely inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis. • The findings support a modified EKC hypothesis for resource-intensive SSA countries. • A monotonically increasing relationship is found in non-resource intensive SSA countries. • Economic development can be seen as a solution to environmental degradation. • Country's growth efforts need to be supplemented with pro-environmental measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]