Leadership (Abuja)
10 June 2008
Abuja — President Umaru Yar'Adua says that the poor state of the energy sector has hampered productivity and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.
He stated this yesterday in Abuja at a workshop on "Energy poverty in Africa," organised by OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID).
Represented by the minister of Finance, Dr Shamsudeen Usman, the president said energy production in Africa was the lowest anywhere in the world.
"We account for only 6.4 per cent of the world's energy production. Electricity accounts for only 4 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa's total energy consumption
"Yet, it is a most vital input in the production process and social services as education and health-care," he stressed.
He said Africa depended on inefficient, traditional bio-mass, which accounted for more than 80 per cent of primary demand used for cooking and heating water in households.
Yar'Adua pointed out that Africa was not poor in energy as its 30.3 million square kilometres landmass was endowed with unexploited fossil and renewable energy sources.
He said Africans should search for solutions to energy sector challenges as the progress of the continent was primarily in their hands.
"The default mechanism for progress in Africa is right here on the continent. Nigeria's own stand on this issue is that charity should begin at home," he noted.
The Minister of State for Energy (Petroleum), Mr. Odein Ajumogobia (SAN), said more than 500 million people in sub-Sahara Africa lacked access to electricity and relied on manual labour for production.
The minister said that the production processes limited the capacity to optimise output, with low-production, low earning and poor economic growth.
He said various measures had been put in place to reverse the energy poverty situation by individual countries.
Ajumogobia explained that Yar'Adua's reforms would turn around the oil and gas and the energy sub-sectors to ensure efficiency in the use of resources.
Also speaking, the Mozambique's Energy Minister Dr. Salvador Namburete, said yesterday in Abuja that Africa required about N2 trillion annually, to meet its energy needs.
Namburete said this while presenting a paper on "Regional Integration of Power Systems: A Tool to Reduce Energy Poverty and Accelerate Economic Growth," at the on-going OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) workshop.
According to him, "the World Bank estimates that Africa needs over 20 billion dollars a year to face the daunting challenges in the energy sector."
The minister said that even with this level of investment, there would still be 1.4 billion people without access to electricity on the continent.
He said in spite of their abundant energy resources, majority of Africa countries relied on low quality energy, with only 24 percent of Sub-Sahara countries having access to modern sources of energy.
He urged African countries, irrespective of their level of energy potential, to share common responsibilities to overcome the challenges.
"No country today can shy away from the required joint efforts aimed at finding appropriate solutions to the current challenge of energy supply and sustainability," he said.
He said for the past two decades, there had been little investment in the continent's energy sector, adding that the situation had been compounded by vandalism of energy installations.
Other factors, he said, were insufficient power generation capacity to meet growing demands and low level of access to energy for business, basic services and household needs.
The Minister of State for Energy (Power), Hajia Fatima Ibrahim, said the current energy crisis was a threat to the achievement of the MDGs by African countries.
She called for greater involvement of the private sector in addressing the challenges of energy in Africa.
"Our long term vision for power is a world class industry, with the private sector taking the lead in the provision of power infrastructure," the minister said.
She said the priority of Nigeria's government was to meet the 12,000 megawatts of electricity in the country.
"The ongoing Independent Power Projects would go a long way in complementing the efforts of the Federal Government towards efficient power delivery, " the minister said.
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