Fixing Africa's electricity woes needs more than just power

With 567 million people without access to electricity, sub-Saharan 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 sub-Saharan Africa has been left behind," said Abubakar Sambo, a former director general of Nigeria's Energy Commission, who added 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, he told DW. More than four out of five people living in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa were without it in 2021.

Although many African nations are increasing their electricity supplies, the improvement is barely keeping pace with sub-Saharan Africa's population growth. Because of this, the total number of people without access to electricity in the region stayed roughly the same in 2021 as in 2011, according to the latest energy progress report published by a group of international agencies, including the World Bank and the Intentional Energy Association (IEA).

In West and Central 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%.

The high cost of electricity is a primary barrier to the continent's economic development, wrote Murefu Barasa, managing partner at the Kenyan-based energy consultancy EED Advisory, in a briefing, placing "an enormous burden on firms that need affordable power."

Despite this, he pointed out, many governments and donors still put emphasis on expanding access to electricity — and affordability receives less attention.

With many sub-Saharan nations hit by spiraling costs of living amid stubbornly steep inflation, the high cost of electricity squeezes not just businesses but also individuals.

"You can imagine that in sub-Saharan Africa, being one of the poorest regions in the world, people are going to prioritize food or healthcare, or even maybe education for their kids as opposed to electricity," said South African-based energy economist Lungile Mashele.

That can lead to people reverting to using kerosene for lighting, coal for cooking and open fires for heating, which "leads to numerous other social ills over and above the economic cost that poor people have to forego," Mashele said.

Reasons behind acute shortfall

The reasons for Africa's dire delivery of electricity are myriad. These include everything from aging infrastructure and a shortage of skilled labor to vandalism, non-payment of electricity bills and even drought in those countries which rely on hydropower.

Using Nigeria as an example, energy expert Sambo said a major problem is that even government agencies were "often reluctant and late" to pay their electricity bills. "When the electricity workers go to disconnect them for lack payment, they're often chased away with guns."

But the bigger issues holding back the electrification of sub-Saharan Africa are the lack of long-term planning, weak regulators and the difficulties in attracting finance for both centralized and off-grid power systems, experts said.

Like other experts, Ifey Ikeonu, a West Africa-based energy market and regulations consultant, pointed to the gap between the ability of national governments to plan effectively for the electricity sector and, more importantly, to carry out — and continuously review — these plans over the 10 to 20 years they need to bear fruit.

That's because, in sub-Saharan Africa, such plans are often canceled every time there's a change in government, she said.

Fixing Africa's electricity shortfalls requires massive financing, but the continent attracts low private sector investment in energy infrastructure.

"Only about 3% of energy investments worldwide are made in Africa, even though the continent is home to 17% of the world's population," wrote Kenyan President William Ruto and IEA head Fatih Birol in a July analysis.

For Ifey Ikeonu, to make sub-Saharan African more attractive for energy investment, regulators need to be strengthened to look after the interests of both investors who want a reasonable return on their assets and customers who want access to affordable electricity and good quality of service.

Edited by: Keith Walker

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