Weak Power Grids in Africa Stunt Economies and Fire Up Tempers
“It’s like death, this load shedding,” Ms. Ngwenya, 45, said, referring to the blackouts imposed by South Africa’s state utility to prevent a collapse of the national electricity grid.
With winter here in South Africa, the worst blackouts in years are plunging residents into darkness in poor townships and wealthy suburbs alike. The cutoffs have dampened South Africa’s economy, Africa’s second biggest, and are expected to continue for another two to three years.
Despite a decade of strong economic expansion, sub-Saharan Africa is still far behind in its ability to generate something fundamental to its future — electricity — hampering growth and frustrating its ambitions to catch up with the rest of the world.
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Motlatsi Qhena · @DjAdonis_ERI wonder if you can hold city power/ Eskom liable when you end up in a huge accident where the road has no working lights. 😏
All of sub-Saharan Africa’s power generating capacity amounts to less than South Korea’s, and a quarter of it is unproductive at any given moment because of the continent’s aging infrastructure. The World Bank estimates that blackouts alone cut down the gross domestic products of sub-Saharan countries by 2.1 percent.
The crippling effect on sub-Saharan Africa was recently on display in Nigeria, which overtook South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy last year.
Nigeria’s electrical grid churns out so little power that the country mostly runs on private generators. So when a fuel shortage struck this spring, a national crisis quickly followed, disrupting cellphone service, temporarily closing bank branches and grounding airplanes.
The power shortages and blackouts have cast a harsh light on elected officials, causing rising anger among voters for whom reliable electricity was supposed to be a dividend of democracy and economic growth.
Experts say that the appointment of politically connected officials with little industry expertise at the South African state utility, Eskom, has led to mismanagement just as it has at other state-owned enterprises.
“It’s not only a symbol of failure when the lights go off,” said Anton Eberhard, an energy expert and a professor of management at the University of Cape Town. “It’s experienced directly by people. If you’re about to cook or if your child is studying for an exam the next day and your lights go off, people feel this very directly. There is a very concrete and dramatic expression of failure.” Continue reading the main story
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