Africa is often referred to as the dark continent and a former Belgian colony as the heart of darkness. These descriptions, referring to an earlier time, are today appropriate reflections of the continent’s desperate electricity poverty. Simon Allison highlights how governments and the private sector could develop a far-sighted energy infrastructure in Africa.
Viewed from space, the African continent at night bears a disturbing resemblance to some of the world’s most desolate, uninhabited places: Alaska, Siberia and the Australian outback. From this distance Africa is almost completely shrouded in darkness. You would never guess that one billion people inhabit this continent.
In glaring contrast, most of the Americas, Asia and Europe twinkle with the yellow glow from billions of streetlamps, car headlights and brightly-lit living rooms, a graphic reminder of just how little access to energy African leaders have given their people. New York alone uses as much power every day as sub-Saharan Africa in its entirety (excluding South Africa, which guzzles electricity at a ferocious rate).
No one denies that this “energy poverty” has short-circuited Africa’s development. The current question is how to reverse it.
Of course, things have changed since the early 20th century when the developed world was developing. No one then gave a second thought to diminishing resources, carbon emissions or impending climate change. African leaders have taken this into account. Their consistent position at climate change negotiations has been that they did not cause the problem, and so should not be required to adopt energy restrictions—especially when developed countries are not making sacrifices themselves.
It is an emotive argument riddled with questions of fairness and responsibility. Almost without exception, the developed countries are shirking theirs. But this is not a constructive argument. It might not be fair but the log-jammed negotiations prove that Africa is going to have to address the related challenges of energy poverty and climate change by itself.
This does not mean, however, that Africa can ignore the pressure to develop an environmentally-friendly energy policy. Quite the opposite. Even without the spectre of climate change, clean, efficient and renewable energy is the most sensible answer to Africa’s energy poverty. It must be clean because dirty energy is a health hazard, whether indirectly in the form of global warming or more obviously in the form of air pollution or radiation leaks (think Chernobyl and Fukushima). It must be renewable because non-renewables will run out eventually. And it must be efficient, so that less energy will be needed to satisfy the needs of the continent.
There are ways to do this. Professor David Jhirad is the director of the energy, resources and environment program at John Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. For decades, he has been working on how to electrify countries in the developing world. He outlined a few of the best ideas in an interview with Africa in Fact.
On the production side, huge advances have been made in how energy is extracted from coal, he explained. This is relevant because coal is by far Africa’s most important energy source. On average, coal plants operate at about 35% efficiency, meaning that two-thirds of the energy produced is lost in the process. New developments such as ultra-supercritical boilers and flexible fuel technologies, being pioneered in Denmark currently, have raised efficiency to 45%–47%, an increase of more than a quarter. Making sure new plants are built and old ones retrofitted could dramatically boost a country’s power output.
On the distribution side, cities can greatly improve how they use energy by introducing smart power grids. Instead of the usual models, which send electricity through wires allowing consumers to draw on demand, smart networks envisage consumers producing and storing their own energy with advanced battery technology and smart electricity metres and appliances. This has a few advantages. It would: allow the network to operate more efficiently; provide a higher quality of power and make the supply far more reliable; and allow utilities to reduce stand-by capacity, saving money and energy. Done properly, a smart grid would complement a smart transport network (integrating vehicles, preferably electric, with well-designed mass transit systems) and a smart heating and cooling network (using new technologies to greatly reduce the amount of energy used to regulate temperature).
African countries, with their deficient energy infrastructure, have a unique opportunity to implement these ideas as they develop their power plans, Professor Jhirad says. “There is a chance to build a new infrastructure in African cities and rural areas,” he says. “The key challenge is to get the financing right and the governance right.”
These are daunting challenges. On the governance front, the biggest problem will be getting governments to cooperate with each other. Africa has more countries than any other continent, many divided along artificial colonial borders. It is simply not feasible for each country to have its own, isolated energy system. Energy must flow across those borders. To achieve this, countries must work together, not something Africa shines in doing.
Then there is the money problem. Building any kind of energy infrastructure requires massive capital investment. It takes $1.5 trillion every year for the world just to maintain what it already has. New power stations, new grids, and smart energy devices are prohibitively expensive. Many African leaders find it hard to back these kind of long-term investments that will only pay off in some future president’s time in office. Suddenly, all these good ideas seem less attractive.
Independent power consultant Jan Schroeder explained the dilemma facing South Africa, a predicament that applies across the continent: “They need to provide affordable power. So people say, ‘Give us renewable energy, and give it to us cheaply.’ The truth is, there is a [waiting] period that you have to go through. At the moment, renewable energy is still very expensive. It could be three to four times the price of coal energy.”
This is where Africa’s obstinate—and not unjustified—position at climate change negotiations surges in. African leaders are aware of the importance of clean, green energy; they just cannot afford it. But in this straitened economic climate, developed countries will not provide this money, or not nearly enough. More creative solutions are needed, either to raise the funding or to change the funding model.
Professor Jhirad suggests tapping into sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), govern- ment investment funds that typically look for capital-heavy, long-term investments. In total, they are worth an estimated $5 trillion. That is the kind of money that could solve Africa’s energy problems. The involvement of foreign government entities, however, would raise all kinds of political problems, as we are seeing in African countries where Middle Eastern SWFs have bought up vast swathes of land, in what some have described as a modern colonial land-grab.
A more radical idea is to take energy generation out of government hands and make it a private, commercial project. This is not far-fetched. Cellphone companies have already demonstrated that they can build national networks on their own, with cell phone towers sprouting up in some of Africa’s most rural spots where no state telephone or electricity networks have ever reached. These off-grid towers are typically powered with diesel, an expensive option. Professor Jhirad reckons that these towers could power themselves, if they are organised into smart mini-grids and utilise local, renewable energy sources such as solar power. Excess electricity generated would be sold to the local community. Professor Jhirad and his team are trialling this solution in India early next year, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. If it works, sub- Saharan Africa is the next target.
Getting Africa out of energy poverty is no easy task. It will be complicated and expensive requiring political will and creative, innovative solutions. By virtue of its relative lack of infrastructure, however, African countries have a golden opportunity to implement clean, efficient and renewable solutions to their power problems, ones that can serve the continent for many decades to come. Good governance requires that our leaders muster up the energy to take this opportunity.
Failing this, Africa’s leaders must not impede the efforts of others. Private solutions such as the one outlined above may well be Africa’s best hope for electrification in the near future, especially if the energy generated can be fed effectively into the national grid. It works for telecommunications where private mobile networks dwarf the range of state-operated fixed lines in most African countries. There is no reason that a similar success story—and a similarly profitable story—cannot revolutionise the power sector. All will depend, however, on a stable political and regulatory environment which permits and incentivises companies to do so.
