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Costly electricity
Many of the discussions around getting electricity to more Africans are about how governments, NGO partners and investors, can bring online more of the 600 million plus people currently out of reach of an electricity grid or other non-traditional energy sources.
This is important, but the other daily talking point in African urban areas in particular, is how to maintain the electricity that we have at sustainable and satisfactory levels. This is an area of interest for a paper published this month from Carnegie Mellon University’s engineering and public policy department. It looks into how much people and businesses spend on back-up generators in light of (excuse the pun) the torrid daily supply rates in many countries. Even as African countries try to expand their electricity output, many people who have access to the grid face increasingly regular electricity blackouts and brownouts due to capacity shortages and infrastructure failures.
World Bank says countries in sub Saharan Africa have annual outages from 50 hours to 4,600 hours. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so that’s more than half for some.
This may be unsurprising to some of those who live in countries including Nigeria, Niger and DR Congo but it is also important to understand the heavy cost this adds on a per dollar basis for electricity. In many countries where back-up diesel generators are used to supplement or completely support daily life, the cost of electricity can be as much as three times higher than with their grid. All countries see a significant cost-jump with diesel generators, and this analysis, by the researchers’ own admission, doesn’t even include the capital or fixed costs of maintaining generators.
The authors estimate that Nigeria, with its high frequency of blackouts, has a “mean net cost of electricity” from diesel generators of around $1.6 billion per year. Senegal, a smaller country with more stable electricity, has a mean net cost of about $4 million per year.
And yet, the biggest cost of having to power our cities this way may yet be the long-term health of the countries’ residents. As the diesel (and petrol) generators work overtime to keep the lights on this increases the reliance on fossil fuels from 50% to as much 1,000 times for countries whose grids don’t use fossil fuels at all (e.g. hydropower). Then there’s the increase in air emission pollutants including CO2, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter. These all become increasingly important in discussions around climate change and human health.
— Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor
Stories from this week
Fintech bags a win—and a loss—in Nigeria. Flutterwave, the Nigerian payments startup, announced an extension of its Series A funding round which takes the total funding it has raised beyond $20 million. But as it welcomes new investors, including Mastercard, Flutterwave is also losing its high-profile co-founder Iyinoluwa ‘E’ Aboyeji.
We’re having the wrong debate on Africa’s China debt and overlooking the agency of African leaders. When Sino-Africa relations are discussed these days, there’s a lot of focus on debt and the imbalance of political and economic power between both sides. Yet that discounts the influence African states have, both continent-wide and nationally, in determining their own destinies.
Somalia’s entrepreneurs are defying odds to launch e-commerce businesses. A weak economy, lack of a talented workforce, and low internet penetration still bedevil Somalia. But as Abdi Latif Dahir reports, enterprising young entrepreneurs are building businesses that are transforming the way people shop and creating much-needed jobs.
Africa’s economies are some way off fulfilling the “Africa rising” narrative. Only two African countries—Mauritius and South Africa—ranked in the top half of the latest Global Competitiveness Report. The median score for sub Saharan Africa is the lowest among all regions and African countries make up 17 of the bottom 20 nations., Yomi Kazeem notes.
Kanye West’s trip to Uganda has just been so tone deaf. It wasn’t just that Kanye handed out Yeezy trainers to orphans and enjoyed photo-ops with one of Africa’s longest-serving autocratic rulers, but as Lynsey Chutel argues, the once socially-conscious rapper is far removed from the political or economic realities on the continent and this trip probably alienated a once loyal African fan base.
The World Bank’s optimism on declining global poverty is misguided. World Bank said this year we’re seeing the “lowest poverty rate in recorded history” but Alf Gunvad Nilsen thinks that doesn’t begin to capture the whole story. One of the key problems is the economic growth that lifted countries from low-income status to middle-income status has been profoundly unequally distributed.
Chart of the Week
French is now the fifth most-spoken world language and growing—thanks to Africans. A report by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie found “the center of gravity of the Francophonie continues to move south.” Africans now account for the highest instance of French spoken each day. French remains the language of government and the classroom in over a dozen African countries, and the Africans surveyed say they plan to pass the language on to their children.
Other Things We Liked
Nigeria’s scant mortgage market is getting a boost. Access to capital is a general problem across Nigeria’s economy and obtaining loans for homes is particularly difficult. But as Elisha Bala-Gbogbo and Emele Onu report for Bloomberg, a new push to fund the federal mortgage lender could see several potential home owners have their dreams fulfilled—and ease Nigeria’s housing shortage.
Does Citizenship Shape Identity? A “Third-Culture” Writer Takes Stock. In an account for Vogue Magazine of her own peripatetic childhood from Khartoum to Abidjan, via Cairo, then Toronto and now Trump’s America, Rawiya Kamier challenges narratives of migration and citizenship and ultimately identity.
Thousands flock to a city of gold in the Sahara. Niger is at the intersection of migrant smuggling, global terrorist security concerns and an explosion in artisanal mining, find Wall Street Journal‘s Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin and Joe Parkinson ($). A new local economy has been created in a small town as people come from far and wide to mine gold under dangerous conditions and hopefully make enough money to fund a risky journey to Europe.
ICYMI
Promoting economic empowerment for people with disabilities. Twenty mid-career professionals from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda can undertake an intensive five-week, university-based training on inclusive disability practices in the workplace. (Nov. 19)
Claude Ake 2019 visiting chair. In honor of the distinguished Nigerian scholar, the Nordic Africa Institute is calling for applications from social scientists working at African universities on issues related to war, peace, human rights, and democracy. (Dec. 1)
Studying road safety. The two-year master’s program at the University of Hasselt offers scholarships to citizens of 19 African states to create innovative solutions regarding transportation and road safety measures. (Feb. 1)
Keep an eye on
Mogadishu Tech Summit (Oct. 23-25). The inaugural convention will bring together more than 600 delegates from across the world to explore business and investment opportunities in Somalia’s tech ecosystem.
Lagos Fashion Week (Oct. 24-27). Designers, consumers, and investors will attend the major fashion event that will display the best of Nigerian and African fashion.
Aké Arts & Book Festival (Oct. 25-28). The sixth edition of the festival will take place in Lagos showcasing the very best of contemporary African literature, poetry, music, art, film, and theater.
*This brief was produced while listening to Margarida by Eddy Tussa (Angola)
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