SEEKING LIGHT IN DARKNESS,DEVELOPING NATIONS POWER/ELECTRICITY PROBLEM

Fixing Africa's electricity AND DEVELOPING NATIONS woes needs more than just power

DEVELOPING NATIONS AND Africa trails the world when it comes to access to electricity. It needs to fix more than its power supply issues to get the continent electrified.

With millions people without access to electricity, Africa is the least electrified region in the world. This means around half of people on the continent can't flick on a light to do homework, turn on a fan to cool themselves or charge their cellphones to order more fertilizer.

"It is really pathetic that Africa has been left behind, that other regions, such as Asia and the Middle East, are approaching near-universal electricity access.

Access to electricity on the continent also isn't socially inclusive, More than four out of five people living in rural areas in Africa were without it .

Although many African nations are increasing their electricity supplies, the improvement is barely keeping pace with Africa's population growth. Because of this, the total number of people without access to electricity in the region stayed roughly the same

Africa, population growth even outpaced electrification progress in this time period, leaving a greater percentage of the population in the dark

The lack of electricity is a major hurdle to gaining an education, getting healthcare or finding a job. Around half of primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa are without electricity, a 2023 UNESCO study finds, while three out of five health facilities do without, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Businesses can't flourish where there's no electricity, and the lack of it also makes it difficult for African countries to create jobs or attract investment.

On top of this, the electricity that is provided is often unreliable and expensive.

Frequent power outages

Electricity shortages plague many of Africa's nations. To give an example from just one region, only 2 out of 11 countries in Southern Africa — Angola and Botswana — have been spared widespread power cuts in the past decade, according to an analysis by the global risk company Crisis24.

South Africa, Africa's most industrialized economy, has seen rolling blackouts of up to 10 hours a day this year. At the beginning of the year, neighborhoods could only sustain demand for power for up to six hours a day even though only half of its population is connected to the grid.

It's a similar situation across much of sub‐Saharan Africa, where nearly four?out of five firms (78%) report facing regular and lengthy outages, the highest rate in the world.

"Firms have identified the unreliability of the electricity supply as one of their main obstacles to expansion," according to a 2018 study into how power outages affect companies' performance.

Unsurprisingly, the rate of firms in the region owning or sharing a generator (53%) is also the highest globally.?But using backup energy costs approximately three times more than paying for electricity in countries like Nigeria and Uganda, adding considerably to the expense of doing business.

Prohibitive prices

Poverty, combined with the exorbitant cost of power, feeds the problem of lack of power. One study worked out the cost of running a refrigerator for a year in African nations compared to industrialized nations. It found that in Liberia, it costs 49% of average GDP per capita to power a fridge for a year; in Rwanda 13%. In the United Kingdom, by comparison,?the cost is so negligible that it's 0%.At present, 600 million people, or 43% of the total population, lack access to electricity, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda are on track for full access by 2030, offering success stories other countries can follow.

The entire installed generation capacity of Africa’s 48 Sub-Saharan countries is just 68 gigawatts, no more than Spain’s. As much as one-quarter of that capacity is unavailable because of aging plants and poor maintenance.

In Africa, just one person in five has access to electricity. If current trends continue, fewer than 40 percent of African countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050.

Per capita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) averages only 124 kilowatt-hours a year and is falling. The rate of consumption is barely 1 percent of that in high-income countries. If entirely allocated to household lighting, it would hardly be enough to power one light bulb per person for six hours a day. More than 30 African countries are now experiencing power shortages and regular interruptions in service, leading many to rely on very costly leased generating plants as an emergency stopgap (see figure). Frequent power outages mean big losses in forgone sales and damaged equipment—6 percent of turnover on average for formal enterprises, and as much as 16 percent of turnover for informal enterprises unable to provide their own backstop generation. The economic cost of power shortages can amount to more than 2 percent of gross domestic product. For some countries, it has shaved as much as one-quarter of a percentage point off annual per capita GDP growth rates.