African power utilities have been urged to adopt good policies and pricing and be at the forefront of change or risk being left behind.

“Africa contributes less than 3% of manufacturing globally. That is unacceptable. Our population will be 1.4-billion by 2030 and two-billion by 2050. We need to create ten-million jobs a year. But you can do nothing without electricity,” United Nations (UN) under-secretary general Kandeh Yumkella said at the opening of African Utility Week in Cape Town.

He called on thousands of delegates to be champions of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) to ensure reliable, sustainable modern energy services for all. 

“We have been selling fruit and vegetables in Africa for 400 years. We should be building factories. Fifty per cent of the fruit produced in Africa rots on the farm. You need to create the value chain to ensure food security. None of that happens without electricity. Energy is needed for transport, storage, processing and production.” 

Yamkella, who is also CEO of Sustainable Energy for All in his home country of Sierra Leone, said utilities in some African countries were blocking change and resisting renewables as new forms of energy.

“It’s a moral obligation. If you don’t do your work properly, our people die. In my country, if the electricity goes off in a hospital, a doctor has no option but to continue the surgery as best as possible with just the light of a mobile phone.”

He also lambasted Nigeria for continuing to flare gas instead of using it for power generation.

“Thirty per cent of new discoveries of oil and gas have been in Africa. So it is unacceptable that Nigeria has flared gas for 50, 60 years. They must use gas for power generation. Instead of burning the gas, they should be piping and selling it.”

Yamkella told several thousand delegates that utilities needed to be at the forefront of energy trade.

“Utilities must embrace change to be part of the fourth industrial revolution. You must embrace distributed energy.

“Imagine if countries like Mozambique, Kenya and Uganda shared oil and gas, geothermal and hydropower. East Africa could be self-sufficient.”

Utilities also needed good pricing and to educate people to realise that power was not for free.

“You need the right public policy for people to invest in your utility. Eighty per cent of African utilities are in the red.”

He said leaders were starting to talk about the fourth industrial revolution, with the digital revolution interplaying with sciences such as nanotechnology and biotechnology.

“Africa financed the first industrial revolution with slave labour. We financed the second and third industrial revolutions with our natural resources. The fourth industrial revolution has to be ours.

“For us in Africa, access to affordable, reliable modern energy services is about the very survival of Africa. It is about industrialisation. We have to transform big-time.”

About 600-million people in Africa still do not have access to electricity. According to KPMG, the current installed generation capacity in Africa is 80 GW. More than 50 GW is generated by South Africa alone.