Mary Kimani
7 November 2008
People in Zanzibar danced in the streets in June to celebrate the resumption of power after a month-long blackout caused by failure of the power lines supplying electricity from the Tanzanian mainland.
While the island suffered one of the most prolonged blackouts in recent memory, its plight is not new. In April 2008, the International Monetary Fund reported that some 30 of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have suffered "acute" energy shortages in recent years.
The causes, notes Mr. Ram Babu, the chief power engineer at the African Development Bank are many, but mostly because the continent's power infrastructure is poorly maintained, prone to collapse and is unable to keep up with surging demand brought on by the continent's impressive economic growth.
Until recently, he told Africa Renewal, governments invested little in power companies but demanded that the companies supply electricity to the public at low rates. As a result, he explains, "Many utilities are heavily in debt. They are selling power at a cost sometimes lower than that of production. They are making losses and have hardly any resources with which to maintain their current infrastructure."
Expanding the supply of electricity is critical for Africa's continued economic growth and a major priority of the continent's development blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa's Development. But the price is high: according to the International Energy Agency, Africa needs about $344 bn to create additional electricity capacity, upgrade installed equipment and extend transmission and distribution networks to households and factories across the continent.
Flawed policies
Electricity shortages do not only affect economic productivity. They also reduce people's quality of life. Without power, "clinics cannot deliver babies safely at night, children cannot study longer, businesses close at sunset and vaccines cannot be reliably refrigerated," observes Vijay Modi, a researcher on alternative fuels for Africa at Columbia University in New York.
Despite African government policies that kept electricity prices low, some 550 million people, or almost 75 per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, still do not have access. In 2004 in East Africa, fewer than 3 per cent of rural people and 32 per cent of urban residents were connected to their national grids. Connection rates are not much better in the rest of Africa, with only Côte d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe exceeding 70 per cent coverage.
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