A Tale of Two Workshops

Connie Smith, experienced consultant in sustainable energy development, energy and environment, and climate change mitigation policies, explains why peri-urban electrification in Africa is lagging behind.

 In the last decade, major progress has been made in connecting people in rural, peri-urban and urban areas to reliable and safe electricity services in developing countries.

However, there has been a strong divergence in the progress in the electrification of rural areas compared to informal settlements or slum in peri-urban and urban areas, particularly in Africa.

Whereas developing countries in other parts of the world are now much further ahead in electrifying these areas, in Africa there has been up until now greater emphasis on rural electrification.

While this is partly because migration to cities has lagged behind other parts of the world, there are a number of other factors, such as poor commercial systems within electricity distribution companies, inadequate cost recovery, safety issues, and in particular theft and therefore a lack of incentives for companies to engage in slum upgrade, which are halting progress in providing safe, reliable electricity to increasing numbers of urban dwellers.

The author of the article suggests that the problem is however solvable and describes what governments and regulators must do in order to ensure that the next decade is one that that sees as much progress in electrifying urban and peri-urban Africa as the last decade achieved in other parts of the developing world.

Read "A Tale of Two Worhshops" or download the article.

Author Connie Smyser is a Partner and Owner of Smyser Associates, a consulting firm specialising in sustainable energy development, energy and environment, and climate change mitigation policies, programmes and projects. She has over 25 years’ experience in promoting sustainable energy on local, regional and international levels and her company is presently a subcontractor to Nexant Inc., a global technology and consulting firm taking a principal role in USAID’s Urban Electrification Project in Liberia after having successfully completed USAID's Slum Electrification and Loss Reduction programme in Brazil. She is also working with the new World Bank African Electrification Initiative.