‘Africa must scale up investment in energy’ – Kofi Annan

African governments, investors, and international financial institutions must significantly scale up investment in energy to unlock Africa’s potential as a global low-carbon superpower.

That is the main message of a new report from Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel, Power, People, Planet: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities. The report calls for a ten-fold increase in power generation to provide all Africans with access to electricity by 2030. This would reduce poverty and inequality, boost growth, and provide the climate leadership that is sorely missing at the international level.

“We categorically reject the idea that Africa has to choose between growth and low-carbon development,” said Annan, chair of the Africa Progress Panel. “Africa needs to utilise all of its energy assets in the short term, while building the foundations for a competitive, low-carbon energy infrastructure.”

In sub-Saharan Africa, 621 million people lack access to electricity – and this number is rising. Excluding South Africa, which generates half the region’s electricity, sub-Saharan Africa uses less electricity than Spain. It would take the average Tanzanian eight years to use as much electricity as an average American consumes in a single month. And over the course of one year someone boiling a kettle twice a day in the United Kingdom uses five times more electricity than an Ethiopian consumes over the same year, the report reveals.

Power shortages diminish the region’s growth by 2-4 per cent a year, holding back efforts to create jobs and reduce poverty, he said. Despite a decade of growth, the power generation gap between Africa and other regions is widening. Nigeria is an oil exporting superpower, but 95 million of the country’s citizens rely on wood, charcoal and straw for energy.

The report points out that households living on less than US$2.50 a day collectively spend US$10 billion every year on energy-related products, such as charcoal, kerosene, candles and torches. Measured on a per unit basis, Africa’s poorest households are spending around US$10/kWh on lighting – 20 times more than Africa’s richest households. By comparison, the national average cost for electricity in the United States is US$0.12/kWh and in the United Kingdom is US$0.15/kWh.

This is a significant market failure. Low-cost renewable technologies could reduce the cost of energy, benefiting millions of poor households, creating investment opportunities, and cutting carbon emissions, according to the report.