India, Oct. 9 -- Akon is known to most people for his music, but fewer know about his work on solar power. According to a 2019 case study titled 'Sustainable energy solutions: Akon Lighting Africa' published in DECISION, he co-founded Akon Lighting Africa, a solar initiative to provide electricity to rural areas in 2014. The initiative says it had installed solar solutions in 14 African countries within a year. The case study describes it as a celebrity-run project.

The need was huge. Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report 2026, a joint report by the IEA, IRENA, the UN, the World Bank, and the WHO, shows that 655 million people in the world still live without electricity, with more than 560 million of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2...