Modern, efficient and affordable energy services are among the essential ingredients of economic development, including the attainment of zero poverty as recognised in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Energy is the life blood of the global economy – a crucial input to nearly all of the goods and services of the modern world. Stable, reasonably priced energy supplies are central to maintaining and improving the living standards of billions of people.
In spite of the recognised role of energy in fostering economic development, it is worrisome to note that energy poverty remains rife. Energy poverty is defined by the International Energy Agency as “the lack of access to modern energy services. These services are defined as household access to electricity and clean cooking facilities e.g. fuels and stoves that do not cause air pollution in houses.”
Energy poverty is very severe in Africa. Currently, 18 per cent of global population (about 1.3 billion people) lack access to electricity despite modest improvements, and 38 per cent lack clean cooking facilities. Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia account collectively for more than 95 per cent of the global total. Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa has been noted as the epicentre of the global challenge to overcome energy poverty. In its 2014 Africa Energy Outlook, the International Energy Association estimates that 620 million
people live without access to electricity and nearly 730 million people use hazardous, inefficient forms of cooking, a reliance which affects women and children disproportionately. About 600,000 are estimated to die each year from indoor pollution from this over reliance on biomass for cooking.
The effect of climate change is all too glaring. Around the globe, seasons are shifting, temperatures are climbing, sea levels are rising and the risk of drought, fire and flood are increasing. The volume of scientific literature on the effects of climate change has more than doubled while the findings have become increasingly more detailed on how climate change working hand-in-gloves with poverty and inequality have continued to pose direct and indirect threats to life and livelihood.
There is no doubt that the lowest-income countries are the worst hit by climate change. The International Bar Association (IBA) in its Climate Change and Human Rights Taskforce Report asserts that “climate change affects everyone, but it disproportionately strikes those who have contributed least to it and who are also, for a variety of reasons, least well placed to respond. By contrast, the main contributors to climate change – those with the largest carbon footprints, living and working in the world’s wealthier regions – are also, by virtue of their wealth and/or access to resources, most insulated from it.”
Unfortunately, much of Africa’s energy needs is still met through fossil and bio-fuels that pose real climate change risks. Countries like Nigeria still depend largely on crude oil exploration which has led to a monumental and reckless ecological devastation in some parts of Nigeria where crude is exploited. Field observations and scientific investigations by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that oil contamination in Ogoni land, a site of oil industry operations in Nigeria since the late 1950s is widespread and severely impacting many components of the environment and means of livelihood of the Ogoni people. Even though the oil industry is no longer active in Ogoniland, oil spills continue to occur with alarming regularity and the Ogoni people live with this pollution every day.
The challenge for Africa, therefore, is how to embrace clean energy innovation, achieve the right energy mix from its abundant renewable resources, break free from the use of fossil fuels and dirty energy and minimise environmental and climate change risks.
What has become clear however is that there can be no development of Africa, the world’s last frontier without access to modern, efficient, clean and affordable energy. It is, therefore, imperative that we work to increase Africans’ access to energy while mitigating the environmental and social risks of climate change to ensure sustainable development. To achieve this, Africa must avoid getting stuck in fossil fuels and embrace clean energy innovation and renewable energy.
Aside individual countries’ efforts, there are quite a number of initiatives on sustainable energy development in Africa including the US Africa Clean Energy Finance Initiative, the G7’s Africa’s Renewable Energy Initiative at COP 21, the AfDB’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA). These initiatives, however, face many challenges which include the continued employment of fossil fuel subsidies, the presence of monopoly structures in the energy sectors, regulatory and macroeconomic risks in sustainable energy schemes, the large capital required to fund sustainable schemes, high transaction costs and below-cost pricing which limit necessary investments.
These initiatives as laudable as they are, are by themselves not enough. Africa needs a two-pronged approach to deliver quick results on the sustainable energy development agenda. We need help to create a simple and sound policy environment that would encourage clean energy innovation and bold renewable energy foreign investments on one hand and indigenous entrepreneurship in clean and renewable energy on the other. More of Africa’s growing billionaires, millionaires and young entrepreneurs need to turn to the power sector and renewable energy particularly as part of a long term, patriotic commitment to the continent’s development instead of just focusing on business areas that routinely turn up quick profits but are ‘sterile’ in terms of long-term development impact.
Indigenous entrepreneurship in renewable and clean energy is as important as attracting foreign investments in that sector. It will help create a complementary and sustainable investment model on clean and renewable energy that will see Africans participate massively in energy entrepreneurship just like we are doing in the manufacturing and hospitality industries.
A country like South Africa has made modest strides in her renewable energy programme. It will prove useful for us to look for ways to improve on this programme and come up with a peer learning dashboard for other African countries in the spirit of regional co-operation.
It is in the interest of the whole world that Africa achieves sustainable and affordable supply of clean energy for all as it presents a chance to unlock a new source of global growth in Africa as China and other emerging markets slow down. The sustainable energy agenda is important to Africa as it provides an opportunity for the continent to correct her less than average performance in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and unlock her potentials.
It is up to Africans especially our entrepreneurs to see what we can do to help Africa achieve on this agenda.
