Anticipating the expansion of power facilities in Africa to meet increasing demand for electricity

Abstract

Africa has 15% of the world's land area, 13% of the world's population, uses approximately 3% of the world's electricity but accounts for only 2% of the global industrial capacity. With an installed generation capacity of approximately 105000 MW, Africa has a relatively small power infrastructure in comparison with its geographic size and population. This paper sets out to achieve the following: identify available electric power generation facilities and current capacities across the continent; analyze the existing power infrastructure and ways in which it can be fully exploited to ensure use of the total capacity without incurring unnecessary and excessive costs; substantiating which power facilities need to increase plant capacity to cope with the future projected demand; to determine the need for new power stations in Africa and evaluating the financial constraints and necessary support to ensure success of these projects. The balance of the paper addresses available opportunities for interconnections for power exchange and their evolution into an interconnected African power grid