Diplomatist Magazine Africa Day Special 2018 | Page 38

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
appointing relevant ministers, arbitration
tribunals and law courts for appeals and
dispute resolutions.
Adesina, during his visit to India last year,
stated that, "rapid urbanisation and rapid
growth of middle class will lead to increased
consumer demand, which is going to make
Africa the place to be. The most important
area for investment is power."
Almost 645 million people in Africa need
to have access to electricity, suggesting a huge
business opportunity to investors from India.
Major Reforms Undertaken
There is tremendous scope for reforms in
the power sector to strengthen the fi nancial
and managerial performance of state-owned
electricity utilities, apart from mobilising
suffi cient investment capital. Some of the
steps taken to boost the sector include
introducing competition, tariff reforms,
minimising government's regulatory role,
among others.
Most of the African nations have
introduced power reforms in the last one
and a half decades, but the reforms in the Sub
Saharan Areas are not at par with the rest of
Africa and calls for speeding up the process
to ameliorate the power situation. Many
countries including Ghana, Namibia, South
Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have
followed the privatisation path to increase
power production.
One of the principle reforms in the
power sector has been the amendment in
the Electricity Act by most of the African
countries, which promotes regulation by
an independent regulatory body, Rural
Electrification administered by an
independent body and the regulatory body,
34 • Africa Day Special • 2018
Challenges in the way to improving the
regional power scenario
The electric power distribution losses
owing to poor transmission and distribution
networks are one of the most significant
impediments in achieving the full potential
towards self-reliance in the fi eld of power
generation. In few of the African countries,
distribution losses as a percentage of total
output is as high as 50 percent.
Some of the countries in Africa that have
improved on checking the distribution losses
are Congo, Senegal, Botswana, Angola, and
Tanzania.
One of the ironies in the power sector
in the African countries is that higher the
generation, higher the distribution losses.
The transmission and distribution losses
are happening due to both technical and non-
technical reasons. The technical aspect of the
problem includes broken or poorly maintained
power lines and transformers, apart from
the poor utilisation and maintenance of
power plants. Non-technical losses at the
distribution level include commercial losses
(where end users are not being billed for
power) and collection losses (where end users
are billed but revenue is not collected due to
non-payment).
Overall, within Africa, the Northern
region fares better than the Sub Saharan
areas in checking the distribution losses
owing to their better management policies
and technological edge.
Conclusion
The African region has witnessed an
imbalance in terms of power generation,
with North Africa performing better than
some other parts in the continent. But most
African nations have now introduced reforms
which are sure to enhance power generation.
The future target for meeting the electricity
demands are ambitious and achievable
only if Africa moves towards increasing its
power generation capacity to raise the living
conditions of its people. 