Powering Africa: Challenges and Opportunities in Closing the Electricity Gap
With some 1.3 billion people, Africa is home to around a fifth of the world’s population, yet it accounts for just 3% of electricity use.
The huge gap between electricity supply and demand in Africa is well known. Only a handful of countries on the continent can boast of 100% electricity access, including Egypt and Tunisia, while a few others get close, such as Mauritius, Cabo Verde and Gabon, according to data from the World Bank.
Some of the larger economies, such as South Africa and Ghana, provide the vast majority of their people with power, but they are still not yet at 100% and power cuts remain a problem – particularly in South Africa where it is an increasingly important political issue. Many other countries have far worse track records, particularly in rural areas – electricity access in Mozambique, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia and some other countries is well below 10% in rural areas.
Across the continent as a whole, electricity access in rural areas is less than 27%, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB). Yet the gap is gradually closing, helped by the increasing diversity of power sources.
Renewable power projects are growing in size and reach and storage solutions are starting to address the intermittency of solar and wind power.
New forms of financing are also being deployed to make the most of local capital. There remain plenty of challenges though.
While the energy transition could allow African countries to create extensive, green energy networks, there remain numerous financial, regulatory and logistical problems that need to be overcome before the continent’s full potential can be unleashed.
In the meantime, governments insist on the need to continue expanding thermal power generation capacity.
Thermal power projects
Africa is home to some of the world’s largest producers of hydrocarbons. Nigeria, Algeria, Angola and Libya are among the world’s 20 biggest oil producers, while Algeria, Egypt and Nigeria are among the 20 largest natural gas producers.
Several African countries also produce coal, most notably South Africa, but also some of its neighbours including Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Given that situation, it is perhaps unsurprising that coal and natural gas are the two largest sources of electricity generation across the continent, followed by hydropower and oil.
The three carbon fuels in that list – gas, coal and oil – between them accounted for about 77% of Africa’s total electricity generation in 2019, according to a 2022 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in collaboration with the AfDB.
While much of the world’s attention has been on the ramping up of renewable energy sources, including hydropower, wind, solar and geothermal power, there remains a strong appetite for conventional fuels, with natural gas in particular identified by many African governments as a vital ‘transition fuel’ in the continent’s journey to reach its net zero carbon emission targets.
This has been the cause of some friction with international partners and, as a result, sourcing finance for gas-fuelled plants has become more difficult in recent years as western backers have shied away from such projects.
Nonetheless, there are numerous thermal power plants under development, or at least under consideration, around the continent – both in terms of new plants being built and existing plants being expanded. A key consideration is often the need for reliable baseload power – something that wind and solar power plants cannot provide due to intermittency of those sources and the under-developed nature of existing power storage technology.
