While most member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had sufficient power capacity to service their respective commercial sectors, SADC States were lagging behind other regions in Africa in the provision of power to rural or undeveloped areas.

“Botswana, for example, has sufficient electricity to power its cities and mines, but this comes at the expense of those living in rural communities,” Botswana Chamber of Mines principal consultant Joseph Ramotshabi said on Friday.

Addressing delegates on the second day of the Africa Mining Summit, in Johannesburg, he noted that only 24% of rural areas in SADC member countries were electrified.

This compared with the 36% rural electrification target achieved by the East African Power Pool and the 44% rural electrification recorded by the West African Power Pool.

Ramotshabi attributed the low levels of power provision in Southern Africa to a trend in which national interests superseded regional planning.

“Despite the fact that effective collaboration will expedite energy provision for the region, each country has its own agenda and is pursuing it independently and, as a result, we have started to lag behind other regions on the continent. A far greater degree of regional cooperation and strategy is required,” he commented.

Further hampering improved power provision in the region, Ramotshabi added, was a lack of genuine offtakers or power purchase agreements with which credible projects could be underpinned.

“We find that, while several power initiatives are supported, in theory, by various governments, they seem to talk about it and talk about it, but nothing happens,” he stated.

In addition, he believed that existing regulatory frameworks were inadequate and not amenable to cross-border power projects or power trading in the SADC region, while existing tariff structures did not reflect the associated costs of power provision.

The SADC region currently had installed power capacity of 55 GW, of which 74% was provided by coal, 20% by hydropower, 4% by nuclear and 2% by diesel; however, peak loads were expected to reach 77 GW by 2020 and 115 GW by 2030.

Independent energy consultant Maree Roos told Engineering News Online last year that this shortfall in power infrastructure would best be overcome by a combination of public and private investment with which power infrastructure projects could be accelerated.

He believed that, while increasing wholesale energy prices would create an opportunity for independent power producers (IPPs), the SADC’s ability to meet demand in the future would depend on utility plans, as well as the investment climate and the environment that was created for new energy players.

“We need a policy, legal and regulatory environment that will encourage private investment through IPPs,” Roos stated.