Di spatche s | A frica
In the dark: Africa’s energy shortfall By Robert I. Rotberg
P
itch blackness is Africa at night. From the space station, from satellites, from high-flying aircraft, even on Google projections, compared to the rest of the globe, much of sub-Saharan Africa is dark from sunset — devoid of those cumulated glowing pinpoints that illuminate the other continents. Students in much of sub-Saharan Africa study using kerosene lamps, the glow from a fire, flashlights or, nowadays, the sparkle of their hard-to-charge cellphones. Electrical power is expensive, but, most of all, it is shockingly scarce, thus seriously inhibiting the development of nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa — hampering mining and manufacturing, and making the enjoyment of modern life as we know it that much more difficult. Today South Africa provides access to electricity to 75 percent of its people and Nigeria to 47 percent. But Ethiopia and Kenya can offer power only to 15 percent of their inhabitants, Mozambique 12 percent, and Rwanda five percent. Much lower figures in those same countries (and many others) apply to citizens living outside of cities. Max power: One light bulb
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Only 25 percent of sub-Saharan Africans and even fewer rural dwellers have regular access to electric power.
no wonder that surging industrial and consumer demand is met in many African countries by scarcity and long pauses. However much electricity large, modern and successful South Africa uses each year, it is far less than its citizens and its mines and corporations demand. South Africa experiences frequent outages. Nearby countries, where electrical power is much less available, have even less electricity to power what industry they might have, and to satisfy citizens. Mozambique, with a big aluminum smelter, subsists on only hundreds of kilowatt hours per year. Rwanda and Ethiopia use even less. Such low yearly per-capita consumption numbers are an indication of how far much of sub-Saharan Africa must grow in terms of energy generation before it can provide
the kinds of uplifted social standards that are common elsewhere across the globe. On a per-capita basis, sub-Saharan Africa relies on less than a third of the electricity available to South Asians. (Long ago, in 1980, the two regions had equal power resources.) Sub-Saharan Africans enjoy 90 percent less power availability than South Americans. A cause of this disparity between continents is that installed capacity for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa (especially in South Africa and Nigeria, among its wealthiest countries) has increased over the last half century much more slowly than it has in the rest of the world. In fact, generating capacities have trailed economic and demographic growth rates by about two percent a year. As Nigeria, Tanzania, the Democratic ReWINTER 2016 | JAN-FEB-MAR
US Aid
Only 25 percent of sub-Saharan Africans and even fewer rural dwellers have regular access to electric power. (About 83 percent of its people therefore still rely on solid biomass energy sources for cooking and winter heating.) According to the World Bank, African power consumption, at 124 kilowatt hours (kwh) per capita per year and falling, is only a 10th of that found elsewhere in the developing world, barely enough to power one 100-watt lightbulb per person for three hours a day. What's more, only 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africa will be able to provide power to all its citizens by 2050, long after Asia and Latin America will have fully served their inhabitants with electricity. Spain’s generating capacity could power all of the 49 nations of sub-Saharan Africa. A mid-sized Canadian city, say Kitchener-Waterloo, can today supply enough electricity to power Nigeria. Given such major weaknesses in power availability in sub-Saharan Africa, it is