Africa seeks regional approach to renewable energy amid instability

African countries are seeking a regional expansion of renewable energy amid rising political uncertainty, currency fluctuations, cost of borrowing and policy instability.

With critical energy projects being unable to progress in the West African bloc due to political crisis as well as rising vandalism of electricity infrastructure, governments, global institutions and the private sector, yesterday, in Nairobi, Kenya insisted on the need to address challenges bedevilling energy transition in Africa.

This came as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) raised concerns about the slow progress of energy transition projects in Africa, noting that many promising initiatives failed at the business development stage, preventing them from reaching financing and implementation stages.

Speaking at the inaugural Investment Forum for the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (APRA) in Nairobi, the Director General of IRENA, Francesco La Camera, said despite Africa’s vast renewable energy potential, most projects submitted to the platforms, like IRENA’s Energy Transition Accelerated Finance (ETAF), did not advance beyond initial development.

“Over 55 per cent of energy transition project proposals received through IRENA’s platforms come from sub-Saharan Africa. However, the majority fail at the business development stage, long before financiers can evaluate them,” La Camera said. He noted that despite its ambitions, Africa accounted for only 1.6 per cent of the world’s installed renewable power capacity.

This figure, according to him, is drastically lower than other regions, with Asia, Europe, and North America collectively holding 85 per cent of the global capacity by the end of 2023.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s renewable energy investments also remain 40 times lower than the global average per capita, according to IRENA. He noted the need to attract both public and private investments to build large-scale renewable projects and interconnected grids and urged governments across Africa to create enabling environments that would include predictable policies, essential to de-risk investments.

While regional collaboration is seen as a leveraging option, Ghana’s Deputy Minister of Energy, Collins Adomako-Mensah, said the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) should address the security challenges facing energy projects like transmission and pipeline infrastructure.

He said: “Security is indeed a critical issue. Even within Ghana, we’ve had cases of pipelines being tampered with. The risk increases when you think about a gas pipeline running from Nigeria through multiple countries to Morocco.”

Kenya’s Energy Cabinet Secretary, Opiyo Wandayi, emphasised the need to accelerate Africa’s transition to renewable energy, adding that the continent was lagging in clean energy deployment.