  From 1972 and the Meadows report to 1997 and the ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol by most of the countries in the world, the global energy policy
framework has undergone a paradigm shift, as human societies have been leaving
aside the sole economic growth to embrace the broader concept of sustainable
development. As new electrification vectors, modern renewable power systems,
such as solar PV, have sprung up in the wake of this major mutation and have
typically been following an exponential growth since the mid-nineties.
Electricity as well as its lack indeed holds a central position within the
human development apparatus, from highly interconnected centralized power
networks reaching 100 % of the population in developed countries, to the almost
500 millions people without access to electricity in the multidimensionally
poor rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The encounter of the worldwide energy
context being changed with each of these specific social-energy paradigms has
ended up considering two strategies for integrating renewable resources in
power systems: the grid-connected architecture for meeting the sustainable
development requirements, and the rural off-grid electrification for settling
the lack of human development. By means of a historical and cross-sectional
overview, we depict here the ins and outs of this protean pattern and, using
the case of solar PV, analyze how it has eventually affected the development
and sustainability of renewable power systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
