JOHANNESBURG — President Barack Obama last year told a cheering crowd in Cape Town that a $7 billion plan to “Power Africa” would double electricity output on the world’s poorest continent and bring “light where currently there is darkness”.
A year later, the US president’s flagship project for Africa has already achieved 25% of its goal to deliver 10 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity and bring light to 20 million households and businesses, its annual report shows.
But the five-year plan has not yet delivered the power.
Power Africa has not measured its progress by counting actual megawatts added to the grid, but promises of additional power made in deals it says it helped negotiate, according to sources inside the project.
Some projects facilitated by Power Africa — a programme operated by the US aid agency USaid — were under way years before the scheme’s inception, others are still in the planning stage.
It is unclear how much of the $7 billion Obama pledged has actually been spent, or if a further $20 billion in private sector investment commitments will materialise.
“Saying you’ve met targets on projects that might never happen or taking the credit for projects that have been worked on for years makes me uncomfortable,” a source working on Power Africa said. “It’s misleading.”
Obama’s pledge to double power generation in Africa within five years looked highly ambitious from the start.
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Per capita electricity output in sub-Saharan Africa has been flat for three decades because most promised power plants never get built.
“We’re dealing with megawatts on paper, rather than on the grid,” a second source working on the project said.
The first African-American US president, the son of a Kenyan father, has often been criticised for a lukewarm engagement in Africa, consisting more of words than deeds.
The 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million.
This constrains Africa’s growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty.
Power Africa co-ordinator Andrew Herscowitz said there had been some confusion about the role of the programme.
It was always intended to “expedite transactions”, facilitating private investment rather than handing out aid.
Herscowitz said Power Africa was there to help the private sector deliver electricity and it had already negotiated commitments from companies worth $20 billion, although he did not know how much of this money had been spent.
“We’re like a pharmacist, where people come to us, we reach out to people and figure out what is needed,” he said.
“In some projects we may have a lot of involvement and in some we have very little involvement.”
Foreign companies sign billions of dollars of agreements with African governments to build infrastructure every year, although a large number are never built.
In April 2011, the US Millennium Challenge Corp, a State aid agency involved in Power Africa, signed a $350 million deal to “revitalise” Malawi’s power sector.
More than three years later, 1,7% of that money has been spent, the programme’s website notes, without giving detail of progress on the ground.
Memoranda of understanding Power Africa signed this year with its six focus countries — Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia and Ghana — contain less than $100 million of financial commitments targeted at specific countries, most of which is for consultants.
US consultancy Tetra Tech won a $64 million contract and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative was given a $3 million deal.
As with many African aid projects, rights groups have criticised Power Africa as mostly being a vehicle to subsidise US companies.
Documents show that $5 billion out of the $7 billion pledged is for loans for US exports from the government’s Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corp.
“It’s absolutely not true,” Herscowitz said.
“Power Africa is an opportunity to turn on the lights for millions of Africans by taking investment from all over the world.
He rejected suggestions that Power Africa merely tapped into existing projects, highlighting a 5MW “NextGen” solar project in Tanzania and a 30MW biomass scheme in Kenya, which he said “didn’t exist before Power Africa”.
However, the NextGen project website says a power purchase agreement for the solar project was signed in January 2013, six months before Power Africa was launched.
It is by no means guaranteed that the Power Africa programme, which has an initial five-year mandate, will continue or be seen as a priority when Obama’s final term ends in two years, US government sources said.
Meanwhile, corruption in the countries in which Power Africa operates is a problem.
Nigeria’s state oil company was accused last year by the then central bank governor of withholding $20 billion in oil funds due to the government.
Tanzania’s parliament is currently reviewing a report on graft in its energy sector.
— Reuters
