Renewed Hope

Six hundred million people in Africa do not have access to electricity. But things are poised to change in the coming decades with a steady rise in investments in renewable energy.

- Maina Waruru

JANET MUSYOKA is a fuel pump operator at a remote shopping centre some 100 kilometres from Nairobi, Kenya. Till 2015, she had to store the fuel above the ground and dispense it manually as there was no electricity to pump it up from underground storage tanks. This was dangerous as the fuel could easily catch fire due to stray sparks. Musyoka would keep applying for a power connection from national utility company Kenya Power, but was often dissuaded by the quotations of over US $5,000 for setting up the power lines.

Things changed that year when a UK electricity mini-grid company, Steama Co, set up a solar energy generation unit, storing the energy in batteries and distributing it through a micro-grid to more than 100 customers around the trading centre.

Electricity now allows Musyoka to use a modern fuel pump to dispense fuel, making her work less cumbersome and turning it into a thriving enterprise.

Musyoka represented an estimated 600 million people in Africa who do not have access to electricity. The continent faces a grave energy crisis: only 32 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity. In urban areas, around 63 per cent of people have electricity, but in rural areas, the number stands at only 19 per cent. Most of the electricity generated in the continent comes from fossil fuels. Given the shortcomings in electricity availability and access, experts have now started looking at renewable energy as the way forward.

Estimates by International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) indicate that half of Africa’s energy will come from renewable sources by 2030. Africa has the potential to produce a massive 330 gigawatts (GW) of power from renewable sources, which is waiting to be commercially “harvested”, says IRENA Director General Adnan Amin.

Power of renewables