More than one third of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity, the head of a top energy industry group said Wednesday.
"Electrification seems to have taken a back seat while governments focus on combating disease and poverty with the meager budgets they have. We have more than a one-third of the regional population living without electricity,"
More than one third of the people living in sub-Saharan
Africa
have
no access to electricity, the head of a top energy industry group said
Wednesday.
"Electrification seems to have taken a back seat while governments focus
on combating disease and poverty with the meager budgets they have. We have
more than a one-third of the regional population living without
electricity," said Latsoucabe Fall, head of the World Energy Council.
"Our collective challenge is to fight the divide between the haves and the
have-nots, narrow the energy gap and achieve the best balance in a way that is
cost-effective," Fall told an energy conference in
Johannesburg
.
Ethiopia
,
Nigeria
and
Congo
are
some of the countries with the least access to electricity.
Fall said
Africa
's climate made it an ideal location for solar and
wind power, but lack of resources hindered their development.
"With a continental population of about a billion, demand for energy will
continue to rise in
Africa
," he said, adding that
60% of the overall African population lived in the dark.
The two day conference which is attended by energy industry experts from the
continent and abroad is discussing
Africa
's
energy supply.
South Africa
, the
continent's largest consumer of electricity, is currently upgrading its
infrastructure to cope with the increasing demand for its mainly coal-generated
electricity.
Regulators in
South Africa
agreed Wednesday to allow the power company Eskom to double its tariffs over
three years to help finance a 385 billion rand ($50.2 billion) expansion.
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