Seems you answered a lot of questions I had.

Seems crazy that much of renewable PPA do not necessarily benefit the majority of energy consumers. Increasing generation capacity or building infrastructure will have associated costs which are not always obvious on the face of it. These projects have to source funding and that will often translate to trickle down costs being borne by consumers (tax increases for other infrastructure which was not budgeted for) or simply higher energy prices for under-utilized production.

I read a very good analysis of the cost of maintaining European offshore wind turbines, basically they were negative yielding from installation. Perhaps solar or hydro has better projections? Obviously in this scenario, tapping into stray energy seems like the right thing for encouraging economic development. Take or pay sounds like it's just pushing the volatility from generator to purchaser. Then I guess you have brokers in the middle trying to onboard more of both and arbitrage the volatility.

When it comes to net positive or negative, I'd say problems we see in developed economies are often arising in the execution of these projects. Energy companies are going to want to maximize revenue and this often comes at a cost to consumers who deal with government financing.

Also, if many of these ventures are going to involve foreign entities, they should be based on having a majority local workforce, contractors should always be selling both skills as well as tech as part of infrastructure deals. Not sure how this stands in Kenya or Ethiopia, or in any African nation that has private energy contractors working there, but seems to be a pattern in other industries where governments negotiate for foreign investment (transportation, telecommunications etc.) and in outsourcing models, particularly with consideration to different scales of populations.

Nationally or regionally, there seems to be homogenous workforces and some very international. I think reciprocation would be a key issue.