Tackling West Africa’s electricity crisis

ARRIVING at Ahmed Sekou

Touré International Airport in Conakry, Guinea not too long ago, one of the first things you noticed in the central car park was the presence of students studying under the lampposts. The airport was for several years one of the only places in Conakry where electricity was almost permanent.

Many countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region have limited access to electricity. With over 16 per cent of the world’s population and a land area of 20 per cent (the world’s second largest continent), Africa has less than two per cent of the world’s industrial capacity, and consumes only six per cent of world energy.

In 2004, the World Energy Council highlighted that Africa had huge capabilities to cover all its energy requirements. Despite this, the continent, more specifically Sub-Saharan Africa is starved of electricity.

Energy resources are unequally distributed in Africa. North Africa is the region most endowed with oil and gas. Most of the coal is in South Africa and the hydro potential is made up of the Congo, Niger, Nile, Volta and Zambezi rivers.

This inequality also exists in West Africa. So, any initiative to establish regional integration that will allow countries to sell energy to each other, should aid the continent’s economic development.

Electricity is far too expensive in some African countries, and this is one reason that is preventing people from accessing it. But a simple policy in favour of competition (to reduce prices) can easily create the right conditions for entry into the market, enhance past investments and strongly encourage future investors.

The West African Power Pool (WAPP) was established in 2000 to address West

Africa’s poor access to electricity by creating a regional electricity market. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) aims to exploit the enormous energy potential of countries such as Guinea and Nigeria to make electricity available to countries less endowed with the necessary resources such as Mali and Burkina Faso.

Guinea, a water rich country, can play a central role in the development of the WAPP. Indeed, several rivers in the subregion (Niger, Gambia and Senegal) have their source in Guinea. The construction and commissioning of the Kaleta hydroelectric dam in 2015 has provided electricity to millions of Guineans and the country exports energy to its neighbours.

Guinea launched a second dam in 2021, the Souapitti hydro plant, with a capacity greater than that of Kaleta. The WAPP should help manage these two dams and encourage similar projects in other countries with hydropower resources.

In 2021, Remy Tehero from the Department of Economics at the Felix Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, analysed the determinants of access rate to electricity in West Africa by taking the case of WAPP countries. His results highlighted the importance of income per capita and the efficiency of institutional framework. Urban population rates and density were also significant.

Although renewable energies (solar, hydro) play an important role within the WAPP, their integration should be built on grid security and stability due in particular to the intermittency that may occur because of weak infrastructure and management.

Other interconnected electricity systems exist elsewhere in Africa. There is the Central African Power Pool (CAPP), which was set up in 2003. The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) was inaugurated in 1995.

The literature on regional power integrations shows that almost all the systems set up in Sub-Saharan Africa are based on the hydro potential of the regions in which they are located. Thus, the WAPP, for example need to adopt robust policies to make the most of this resource.

Some policy recommendations that I would suggest are for the WAPP to promote competition in the energy sector in West Africa to reduce electricity prices; the need for national regulatory agencies to be better coordinated with periodic reviews of regulatory compatibility with the WAPP objectives to be put in place.

Furthermore, some countries have already built hydroelectric dams but the lack of maintenance often leads to breakdowns causing power cuts. People need to be trained to maintain and monitor these facilities.

One of the challenges of national electricity companies in West Africa is that they are unable to generate revenue. Costumers do not pay for the electricity they consume. So, national electricity companies operate on state subsidies and aid from international institutions. Therefore, agencies in charge of electricity billing must be set up in each country. This will make it possible to collect revenue which can be spent on improving the electricity network.

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