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Although 600 million people across sub-Saharan Africa lack access to reliable electricity, nations from East to West Africa risk installing over $180 million worth of unusable electricity capacity by 2023. Simply procuring more power supply will not tackle the energy access issue, according to a new study by Rocky Mountain Institute.
Governments are setting aggressive targets to increase installed electricity capacity by between two and 18 times their current capacity within the next 2-12 years. However, many of these projects lack co-investment in transmission and distribution; they are the wrong type or size of project, or simply located in the wrong place!
According to the study, which analyzed electricity projects to be completed by 2023, this will lead to over $180 million worth of unusable electricity capacity hitting Africans, or more than two-and-a-half times the gross domestic product of Kenya (2016).
How can such a continent-wide misplanning of electricity infrastructure and supply happen across a continent that needs energy access like no other on the planet? And what can be done to better plan Africa’s energy needs without the waste in the next decade?
