How Africans can stay cool as the climate warms

One answer is air-conditioning, which Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, once credited with changing “the nature of civilisation by making development possible in the tropics.” Yet air-conditioning, while cooling people, worsens global warming through power use and refrigerant leakage and by warming the area around air-conditioned buildings. It also remains inaccessible to most Africans. Only half the population has grid power. Even where it is stable, the cost of running an air-conditioner is forbiddingly high, partly because lax regulation means most are energy-intensive and inefficient. Only 5% of African homes have a unit, a percentage that has barely budged in two decades.