COMESA electricity demand to grow 57 percent by 2030

Elita Chikwati Features Editor

Demand for electricity is forecast to grow by 57 percent in the next six years, a Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) report has established.

Nearly 95 million new connections are required for universal access in COMESA.

COMESA assistant secretary general in charge of programmes, Ambassador Dr Mohamed Kadah said this during a virtual meeting on estimating investment needs for the power sector in Africa.

The meeting which was held on Tuesday was also attended by member States representatives of National Statistics Offices, representatives of sectoral ministries in charge of energy, representatives of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and stakeholders from the energy sector ,among others.

Ambassador Kadah said there is need to increase installed electricity generation capacity.

“A doubling of installed generation capacity is required to meet forecast demand growth by 2030. US$34 billion in investments is needed annually to meet the access, grid and generation expansion of the Base-Case by 2030.

“More than 75 percent of needed Base-Case investments are in generation expansion, most of which is projected to happen in Egypt and Ethiopia,” he said.

Ambassador Kadah said COMESA Member States accounts for more than half of the estimated Base-Case investment needs in Africa.

The COMESA Secretariat, through its statistics unit, was the executing agency for the Statistical Capacity Building Programme (SCB-V) funded by the AfDB.

The programme covered a wide range of statistical activities, including surveys on energy under what is known as the Africa Infrastructure Knowledge Program (AIKP).

This was targeted at improving the understanding of the current situation of Africa’s infrastructure.

The report provides the African countries and regional institutions with the information they need to make informed decisions about investment in the power sectors and determines optimal sets of investments to meet the growing demand for electricity in the region by the year 2030.