President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has bemoaned the cost of power in Africa, which is the highest in the world although the continent is home to the least reliable access to power as compared to the rest of the world.
Dr. Adesina’s remarks come in the wake of discussions being spearheaded by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to increase the electricity tariff by at least 100 percent in coming weeks.
Speaking in an interview in Accra, the AfDB President said: “If you take a look at the average amount Africans pay as cost for electricity, it is US$1 per kilowatt hour (kw/h). Comparative figures for Europe is 15 cents per kw/h, United States is 10 cents per kw/h; so not only are we producing less energy but we are paying extremely high for whatever energy we consume.”
Putting Africa’s energy deficit in context, he said the entire continent generates just about the same amount of power as Spain or Belgium although Africa is home to close to a billion people.
Explaining Africa’s energy poverty, Dr. Adesina said on average Africans consume 300 kw/h while the global average stood about 7,000 kw/h.
The relative low power per capita, he said, is responsible for the continent’s inability to industrialise and the reason why small-and medium-scale enterprises are struggling.
Dr. Adesina took office last month and said resolving Africa’s energy challenges is top of his agenda. “First thing we are going to do is light up and power Africa. The continent will record double-digit GDP growth figures,” he revealed.
In resolving the challenges, he revealed that the AfDB has established a transformative partnership on energy for Africa that will bring onboard many partners in order to accelerate access to universal energy in Africa by 2025.
“We are going to do three major things; first of all we are going to unlock Africa’s tremendous potential in renewable energy in addition to other energy sources. Africa has limitless amounts of solar…we have 11 terawatts of potential. In hydro-power we have 350GW potential; wind-power 110GW; and geo-thermal 15 GW.
“Africa has a huge potential for energy, but it’s obvious we can’t light up a house with potential,” he said.
Currently, Dr. Adesina said, the AfDB it is working with G7 countries to develop the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative to unlock the potential of renewables across Africa.
Also, the AfDB will enter into talks with respective governments for them to increase their share of GDP going into energy.
In addition to that: “We are going to work with countries and urge them to carry out fundamental reforms in the energy sector; cost reflective tariffs, reforms of the utilities, and reform of the utilities so that things actually work so they can attract private sector into the energy sector”.
Already the bank has provided a US$25million partial risk guarantee to Quantum Energy in Ghana to cover some of the risks it faces in its operations. The bank, going forward, will be providing more assistance to private power producers.