The Obama administration recently unveiled a new cornerstone of its African policy: Power Africa, a commitment of $7 billion to expand energy access across the continent.
Today, nearly two thirds of sub-Saharan Africans live without energy access. This number climbs to 85% in rural communities. In schools, this means students cannot study at night. In medical clinics, it means patients in need of urgent care are treated by the light of kerosene lamps, and there is no refrigeration for lifesaving medicines and vaccines.
President Obama’s initiative is a critical step forward in the fight to end energy poverty, but after years of working with the public and private sector on African energy projects, it has become clear to us at Innovation: Africa that in order to effectively serve rural people, the U.S. government and its private sector partners must invest significantly in renewable off-grid energy solutions.
Since 2008, Innovation: Africa, a non-profit organization bringing Israeli innovation to African villages, has worked to bring solar energy to the rural poor of Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda. Thus far, we have powered 63 schools, medical clinics and water pumping systems with solar energy, impacting over 450,000 people at a total cost of $1.7 million.
Our numbers are undoubtedly small when compared with the White House initiative, but our experience in the field has taught us that increased power generation and grid expansion doesn’t mean that the energy gets to where it’s needed most.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Mount Elgon region of Uganda, where several years ago the local government and utility company expanded the electrical grid. But the expansion left out countless communities that continue to rely on candles, kerosene and wood for energy and chop down hillside trees whose roots provide critical stability during the rainy season. One mudslide alone killed over 300 people, and this population remains as vulnerable as ever.
The grid also left out the Thornbury-Bufumbo Mission Health Centre: a four-room clinic serving over 29,000 people located just under the power lines and less than ten minutes away from the nearest town. Because of limited funding, the government could not connect both the health center and town to the grid, and so they chose the latter, leaving the clinic without.
Innovation: Africa provided Thornbury-Bufumbo Mission Health Centre with two 120-watt solar panels, enough energy for 12 light bulbs and a refrigerator. And in November of 2010, when the region faced a polio outbreak, it was the government that relied on these same solar powered refrigerators to store and issue over 65,000 vaccines in an emergency polio vaccination campaign.
Since its launch, Power Africa has been largely heralded as a “win-win”– helping to combat energy poverty while providing new investment opportunities for U.S. businesses.
But while the White House fact sheet and the language around the initiative suggest that off-grid projects and renewable energy solutions will be a priority, the government spending allocated exclusively towards these areas amounts to less than 0.5% of the total $7 billion in planned expenditures.
Specifically, just $2 million, or less than 0.03% of the Power Africa budget, has been allocated explicitly towards off-grid energy solutions for facilities like the Thornbury-Bufumbo Mission Health Centre. And less than 0.3% of the overall budget is allocated for the early stage preparation and development of renewable energy projects.
To illustrate this point, three private sector companies that have made pledges towards Power Africa have committed to doing so either all or in part using wind energy and biomass. The remainder, however, specified no such commitment. With only $20 million allocated towards technical assistance and feasibility for renewables, new companies are simply not incentivized to follow suit.
This is a missed opportunity.
Just as African communications essentially skipped land-lines and moved straight to cell phones, it has been speculated and hoped that the same might happen in the field of energy, meaning that the continent might largely bypass conventional energy sources in favor of sustainable ones. For this to happen, however, policies and resources must be in place to make it a reality. The question is: will government agencies (both in Africa and in the U.S.) choose to promote such policies and make these options financially attractive?
We stand at a crossroads with a profound opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of consumers of renewable energy; we have the capacity to think beyond the electrical grid. But it is up to the government agencies controlling the $7 billion in funding and their private sector counterparts to rise to the challenge. For communities like those in Mount Elgon, their lives hang in the balance.
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