The changing face of Africa's energy projects

“Commodity prices may be firmer, but there are still practical issues, which are responsible for the sombre mood. But there’s still optimism about greener, more sustainable energy mix,” said Christopher Marks, head of emerging markets, corporate banking, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Source: Tanesco

Power Africa

Andrew Hercowitz, coordinator, Power Africa said despite the contradictions of Trump administration, he doesn’t foresee many affecting Power Africa.

Launched three years ago by the US government, Power Africa has access to a lot of tools, including the World Bank. “We are able to direct partners to all these tools. Initially we thought, the projects would be largely government subsidised, but we’re also facilitating private investment. We’re going to have allies in this administration, our job is to show results.”

He said that since its inception, Power Africa had provided 57,000MW of power and 8,6m connections on the continent.
“But we can’t celebrate yet, the investment is still small and the installations are mostly solar lanterns, he said.

Tanzania’s approach

Tanzania has taken a different route with power supply and the state-owned Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) is involved in generation, transmission and distribution.

Felchesmi Mramba, former managing director of Tanesco explained that when restructuring the utility, the assets were separated into the respective streams. “We’re looking at other restructuring, such as unbundling. The only thing is how slow this process is moving.”

Tanzania only has two independent power producers, and both have been there for more than a decade.

“The energy sector needs a lot of investment especially when looking at the 7% growth predicted for the economy. However, when we look at pace at which projects are growing, especially those run by the government, progress is slow,” he said.

By 2020, Tanzania will need 4,800MW. "Demand for power is going to grow very fast and current government programmes won’t be able to match demand. We need a combination of approaches, such as private sector investments as well as public private partnerships," he said.