Last December on the 14^th, at the United Nations meeting in Paris, the African nations secured a developmental victory. The African delegations had recently created the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI). In the past, the African nations had been put aside due to their third world country status. They wanted to be given a chance to prove they can be more developed countries than the rest of the world thinks they can be. The deal they cut was $10 billion to be given to the AREI. This would help establish 300GW of renewable energy for these countries through 2030. The African countries were ecstatic that they were given such a deal, as it is a large step forward in development. These countries in Africa have a much smaller GDP and have less access to energy than us in the US, making this a huge deal for them in the future. Here’s the article: http://www.irinnews.org/report/102292/cop21-counting-money

Continuing to focus on Africa, I found an article about the fastest growing countries in Africa, mostly in the southern half of Africa. This article focuses on the African success before the Paris Conference. The southern half of Africa has greatly increased its GDP. Angola tops the charts in the GDP increases of the past year and is shortly after followed by Congo, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania. The well being of their populations have also improved too, with Angola at the top of that list. These countries are improving with better economies and healthier people, but are still very poor in comparison to the rest of the world. Some countries have also increased their economic value but have lessened their well being. The article is listed on the Economist at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2013/05/development-africa

Both of these articles deal with a whole different world than the one I live in, in the United States at State College. The development of these countries in the past few years has taken leaps and bounds to become what they are today and what they will become in the next few years, but are still on a very low developmental level than what I am used to. I am typing this now on a laptop that I charge up every night while I sleep. These African countries are still struggling with getting energy to turn to a light on. That difference is due to the large difference in development. Both Africa and the US are trying to get more efficient and more renewable energy sources, but the primary difference being that we already have a lot of energy sources while they have as little as none.