Oscarline Onwuemenyi 31 May 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The African Development Bank, AfDB, has again set an ambitious goal to help the continent achieve universal electricity access by 2025, with a strong focus on encouraging clean and renewable energy solutions.
To achieve this goal, it is estimated that needed investment in the energy sector will range between $60 billion and $90 billion per year.
This will require providing 160 gigawatts, GW, of new energy capacity, 130 million new on-grid connections, 75 million new off-grid connections and providing 150 million households with access to clean cooking solutions.
In giving this plan a big leverage, the AfDB Group will be investing $12 billion of its own resources in the energy sector over the next five years; this is in addition to a leverage of about $50 billion.
Conservatively, over 640 million Africans have no access to energy, corresponding to an electricity access rate for African countries at just over 40 percent, the lowest in the world.
Per capita consumption of energy in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) is 180 kilowatts per hour, kWh, compared with 13,000kWh per capita in the US and 6,500kWh in Europe.
“These annual meetings are not just about us who are here. They are also very much about the people who are not here. It is about the millions of our fellow Africans without electricity, or food, or jobs; the young people on whom Africa’s future will depend.
“We will never transform Africa without transforming its energy supply. Energy is like the blood in the body. It has to flow – everywhere,” Akinwunmi Adesina, president, AfDB Group, said at the annual meetings of the group in Lusaka, Zambia, with the theme “Energy and Climate Change.”
To light up and power Africa is among the High 5s priorities of the Group. The High 5s agenda – five priority actions for the AfDB and for Africa – is the AfDB’s channel for focusing and scaling up the 2013 -2022, 10-year strategy, to bring about the socio-economic transformation of Africa.
The bank launched a new deal on energy for Africa, which is built on five inter-related and mutually reinforcing principles: raising aspirations to solve Africa’s energy challenges; establishing a transformative partnership on energy for Africa, and mobilising domestic and international capital for innovative financing in Africa’s energy sector.