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Barack Obama’s $9 billion Power Africa initiative makes slow progress
Programme was aimed at doubling access to electricity across sub-Saharan Africa

Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent JULY 24, 2016

When Barack Obama unveiled a $9bn US tax dollar plan to double access to electricity across sub-Saharan Africa it was hailed as game-changing step that could transform millions of lives.

Crumbling, mismanaged energy systems have long been an oppressive brake on economic growth in the region’s 49 countries, which have less grid-connected electricity than South Korea and about 600m power-starved people.

However, three years after Mr Obama promised to bring “light where currently there is darkness” and “clean energy to protect our planet”, progress on the ground is proving painfully slow.

The Power Africa programme, which the president launched in 2013, is supposed to add 30,000 megawatts of electricity by 2030, equal to nearly a third of sub-Saharan Africa’s existing generating capacity.

But only 374MW from six sizeable power projects is up and running so far, according to data provided to the Financial Times by the US Agency for International Development, co-ordinator of the multiple government agencies and companies involved in Power Africa.

Other large power schemes are due to come online soon and the programme is backing several ventures providing smaller household solar panel systems to more than 450,000 customers.

But the rate and nature of progress is raising pressure on an initiative that follows a spate of other well-intentioned efforts to transform a continent blighted by some of the world’s most intractable development problems.

Concerns about Power Africa’s progress have started to surface in some of the companies involved in the initiative, including General Electric, the US conglomerate.

Power Africa is a “well-intentioned effort with a lot of smart people,” John Rice, GE’s vice-chairman, told a conference in Rwanda in May.