Rising population hurting access to power, says report

The rate of population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has outpaced efforts to promote electrification, slowing down social and economic development in the region.

The Africa Energy outlook report for 2014  released by the France-based International Energy Agency also shows that only 290 million out of the total 915 million people living in the region have access to electricity, although investment in new energy supply is on the rise.

IEA also attributes the low electricity accessibility to lack of reliable  infrastructure resulting in the reliance on back-up generators running on diesel.

“A severe shortage of essential electricity infrastructure is undermining efforts to achieve more rapid social and economic development. For the minority that has grid connection today, supply is often unreliable, necessitating widespread and costly private use of generators,” says the report.

Except for South Africa, the report notes that all other countries in the sub-Saharan region suffer heavy transmission losses due to poor maintenance of distribution networks, leading to highest electricity tariffs in the world.

IEA warns that heavy reliance on traditional sources of fuel because of lack of access to electricity, puts a risk to forest stock.  It estimates that demand for biomass energy will rise by 40 per cent in 2040, representing about 650 million people in the region who will be relying on the resources for cooking and lighting homes.

“Four out of five people in sub-Saharan Africa rely on use of solid biomass for cooking. A rise in demand for bioenergy strains on forestry with efforts to promote more sustainable wood production hindered by the operation of much of the fuelwood and charcoal supply chain outside the formal economy,” notes the report.

EXPANDED POWER GENERATION

Kenya is among six countries that will benefit from expanded power generation under an initiative by the US government that is meant to increase access to electricity in Africa.

Together with Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Liberia and Ghana, the country will benefit from development of mini grids and small energy projects to cater for the population that is locked out of the national grid networks in the six African countries.

The $16 billion Power Africa initiative comprises $7 billion financial support from the US government while the rest will encompass $9 billion worth of investments from the private sector both in cash and technical assistance.

The five-year programme targets to promote the use of clean energy from renewable sources such as geothermal, wind and solar to increase access to electricity by facilitating development of new generation projects to enhance the existing regional power pools.

The IEA lauds development of geothermal resources in Kenya and Ethiopia saying it eases heavy reliance on hydro resources.

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) is currently developing 280 megawatts of geothermal electricity. The  entire capacity is expected to be added to the national grid by the end of this year.

The government, through its plan to increase power generation capacity by 5,000 megawatts by the end of 2016, has identified geothermal, wind, coal and natural gas as the main sources of electricity as it seeks to displace diesel-driven thermal generators in a bid to reduce the cost of electricity.

With the project, the government targets to increase the local level of accessibility to electricity to more than 70 per cent. At the moment, only about 32 per cent of the country’s population has access to electricity.

IEA urges Sub-Saharan Africa nations to invest in regional co-operation and integration to facilitate development of new large scale generation and transmission projects to enable cross-border trade in electricity to improve accessibility to power.

It says investing an additional $450 billion in the power sector could reduce outages by half, achieve universal electricity access in urban areas and grow the sub-Saharan economy by 30 per cent in 2040.