Business Times Africa Magazine 2017 /vol 9/ No2 BT2Edition2017_web | Page 58

AFRICA
Africa can lead global
energy utility revolution
By SAM SLAUGHTER, MATT TILLEARD AND JAKE CUSACK
Traditional power utilities are dying. Dra-
matic declines in the cost of solar power and
battery storage are finally giving consumers
power over their own power supply.
Most utilities are hoping it will all just go
away. In some ways, the disruption of elec-
tricity is following the familiar script of most
transformational technological change.
However the setting for this script might
surprise many. The blueprint for our energy
future could arrive first in Africa.
The traditional utility acts as a one-way
pipeline moving electrons from large cen-
tralised generation to passive consumers.
The utility of the future will be more like a
stock exchange: a mesh network that bal-
56 Business Times Africa | 2017
MORE THAN
500 MILLION
AFRICANS
DO NOT
HAVE ANY
POWER AT
ALL.
ances distributed nodes of generation, storage,
and consumption.
This global energy revolution will be the defin-
ing technological change of our century. A mul-
ti-trillion dollar industry will be completely dis-
rupted. Entrepreneurs and large companies are
already scrambling for the Schumpeterian spoils
from this creative destruction.
Before the advent of mobile phones, few Afri-
cans had access to modern telecommunications.
Now nearly every African has a mobile phone
and mobile money is more ubiquitous in Africa
than in developed nations.
Africa “leapfrogged” the old system of copper
landlines with sufficient inertia to lead the future
of mobile, not just catch up.