Brown: Africa’s energy shortage ‘alarming’

SA Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown. File picture: Tracey Adams

SA Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown. File picture: Tracey Adams

Published Jul 19, 2016

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Johannesburg - Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown on Tuesday termed Africa’s energy shortage “alarming”and said it remained one of the biggest barriers to development on the continent.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the lack of electricity in Africa remains one of the biggest barriers to the region’s development and prosperity, and continues to trap millions of our people in extreme and abject poverty. The current energy deficit in Africa is alarming,” Brown said in her opening remarks to the Power-Gen Africa 2016 Conference in Johannesburg.

Quoting data from the International Energy Agency, she pointed out that in 10 African countries, three-quarters of the population are living without access to electricity and in another 10, this is the case for half the population.

Brown said since Africa’s ageing power infrastructure was unable to meet a surge in demand, the answer lay in large infrastructure development projects.

“We need to actively grow our technical and vocations skills in this area in partnerships with others in order to fast-track uptake and ensure reliable energy,” she added.

“I believe that the technological innovations and future expansions will definitely address the challenge of universal electrification in our countries. It is a huge opportunity, the challenge lies in ensuring that we leverage our technological expertise and innovation to provide energy in a cost-effective manner and at the same time grow our different countries’ domestic economies to ensure long-term sustainability.”

Turning specifically to South Africa’s power generation constraints, she noted that the government’s planning process has revealed the risk of a power supply shortfall of six to 10 gigawatts in the next decade or more as older plants are shut down or cease to be reliable.

Plans to increase the use of renewable energy have in turn revealed the challenges in feeding it into the grid.

Without additional capacity, the country’s economic growth would be hampered, she warned, and power prices would spike if these were determined by market forces.

“The push for increasing market influence into electricity network, especially through the mechanisms of privatisation and public-private partnerships call for an increased introspection into the demand and supply networks, our utility and an ongoing assessment of the structure of Eskom,” she said.

ANA

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