By Fiona Forde
It is highly unlikely at this stage that Africa will meet the UN target of access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all by 2030, with Sub-Saharan Africa appearing to be in a dire state.
According to the World Bank’s Global Tracking Framework report released at the Africa Energy Indaba held in Johannesburg on February 1617, 680 million people in the 48 Sub-Saharan countries still do not have access to electricity. A concerted drive between 2010 and 2012 to rectify that problem brought more than 50 million people on to the continent’s grids. While the figure was impressive, it was quickly outstripped by the population growth.
But there are countries that are the exception. Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa recorded excellent power accessibility rates during that same period, while Mali, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also managed meaningful figures, though overall, the growth in electrification was negative.
Little has changed since then. On average, 24 million people are being given access to electricity each year, but in order to keep abreast of the population growth the figure needs to push up to 60 million. This is not an impossible task. In South Asia, electrification has grown four times as fast as its population, according to the report, which puts the global access deficit at just under 3 billion, the majority of it being in rural areas of Africa and Asia.
Not surprising therefore is the fact that percapita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa is falling. It is presently 124 kw-hours a year, not even 1 percent of some of the world’s high-income or more developed countries.
Hours-long power outages have now become commonplace and at enormous costs to local economies, amounting to as much as 2 percent of GDP in some jurisdictions, the report says.
Despite being an energy-intensive region, 70 percent of Africa’s energy consumption is still largely derived from the traditional use of biomass, such as burning trees, yard scraps and municipal solid waste, which partly explains why the continent needs twice as much energy as Europe to produce a single dollar of GDP. It begs the question why two out of three people still lack electricity access in Africa, regarded as the most renewable energy-resourced continent in the world. That said, the continent’s recent foray into renewables (such as hydro, geothermal, wind and solar), which comprise 9 percent of Africa’s energy production, is well ahead of Asia.
If the current trends prevail, less than half of all African countries will have universal access to electricity by 2050, long after the UN’s 2030 target has come and gone.
If the continent were to attempt to play catch-up, the report estimates it would cost around $50 billion to $80 billion each year to do so, of which approximately $784.2 million would have to be targeted at energy efficiency.
The World Bank has appealed to the private sector and international investor community to examine the opportunities the energy deficit in Africa presents. CA
(Reporting from South Africa)