Blackouts are routine in almost all West African countries. The bulk of power plants and transmission facilities were built in the 1950s and 1960s. Little investment and maintenance has left the infrastructure creaking at the seams. Nigeria, a prime example, operates at one-third of its installed capacity due to aging equipment.
During droughts, countries that depend on hydroelectricity ration power to relieve generators, transformers and cables -- such was the case with Ghana in the late 1990s. Wars have left equipment damaged and transmission lines cut. A large portion of Liberia's generation and distribution infrastructure was damaged or destroyed during its long civil war and the national electricity company estimates it will cost more than $107 mn and take over five years to fully restore the system. Sierra Leone's Bumbuna hydroelectric project was nearly complete when civil war disrupted construction.
"In this part of the world, when governments talk of infrastructural development, they are mostly thinking of building a road somewhere. Electricity is considered a luxury commodity”
West African electricity
Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire are the largest generators of electricity in West Africa. Nigeria's major sources of energy are petroleum, natural gas and hydroelectricity. Although the country exports electricity to neighbors, only a small portion of rural households in Nigeria are electrified. Ghana primarily relies on hydropower from its Akosombo Dam, on the Volta River about 80 kilometers upstream from the coast. Ghana supplies Benin and Togo with the majority of their electricity. In Côte d'Ivoire, thermal generating facilities powered primarily by oil and gas provide the majority of electricity. Countries connected to the Ivorian grid include Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo.
The three landlocked and sparsely populated countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are not particularly well served with energy, mainly because they are relatively poor and are at least partially situated in the Sahara. Energy development is also very limited in the small coastal countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau because of small economies and political strife.
Only 2 per cent of Africa's rural people are connected to national power grids.
Posts
