- Title: NIGERIA-WEST AFRICA POWER SUMMIT Nigeria hosts West Africa Power Summit
- Date: 17th June 2015
- Summary: LAGOS, NIGERIA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MAN POURING DIESEL INTO A BUCKET AND THEN INTO A GENERATOR VARIOUS OF MAN STARTING UP THE GENERATOR
- Embargoed: 2nd July 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Nigeria
- Country: Nigeria
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVAD2Z4Y4M2LK6ICLOUFD8CCNEZY
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Nigeria holds the world's seventh largest natural gas reserves but decades of corruption and mismanagement means it barely provides even a fraction of its population of over 160 million with any electricity.
Power blackouts and poor supply are rampant here and in neighbouring economic powerhouse and fellow oil and gas producer, Ghana where power outages have become a symbol of the country's abrupt economic downturn.
For two days, energy industry players, experts and government officials have been meeting in Lagos for the West Africa Power Summit to discuss the challenges and possible solutions to improving the electricity supply in the region and how to attract more investment.
Many had hoped the West African Power Pool (WAPP) - a cooperation of national electricity companies from ECOWAS member states set up 15 years ago, would establish a more reliable grid by leveraging the region's joint resources.
Barth Nnaji, Nigeria's former power minister says the integration is "coming along", pooling power is not yet feasible as members are not producing power at the same levels.
"There needs to be power to pool. You cannot be talking about power pool without power, and countries are hungry for power now. Countries that can't produce the power like Nigeria, like Ghana and all those other countries, they are not producing the power yet so they need to produce the power to be able to pool the power, to be able to regulate the power, to be able to have powers going to communities," he said.
Experts agree that the lack of electricity is a tremendous hindrance to Africa's advancement.
Roughly two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa lacks power, a level that rises as high as 85 percent in rural areas.
U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013 unveiled a 7 billion-dollar initiative to double access to power in Sub-Saharan Africa over a period of five years.
Nigeria handed over state owned distribution firms and six generation companies to private buyers in a bid to boost supply but the situation remains the same.
"We are not talking about generation at the moment. Generation is the first source. We are just talking about distribution and the consumers. So once the distribution company is able to reduce their losses... the major problem here I just discussed with some of the members that they are facing about 50 percent of losses. So the moment they are able to reduce it to say 20 percent or 15 percent, majority of the power crisis will go away," Nnaji said.
Experts say infrastructure will be key in cutting losses. Even though millions of Nigerians go for months on end without power, they are still billed monthly for usage of undelivered services by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
Some people avoid paying for power by tampering with their metres, a behaviour that has hurt many distributors.
Anurag Dharmawat - manager at Indian power infrastructure company Genus, says good metering will cut down on fraud and increase efficiency.
"Once the distribution company is able to reduce their losses... the major problem here I just discussed with some of the members that they are facing about 50 percent of losses. So the moment they are able to reduce it to say 20 percent or 15 percent, majority of the power crisis will go away," Dharmawat says.
If Nigeria gets the lights working it would reduce business costs by up to 40 percent, add 3 percent to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and spur a boom in labour intensive areas like manufacturing, food processing, textiles and pharmaceuticals, while opening up the opportunity for new low-cost service industries like the call centres that aided India's rise.
The 13 billion US dollars a year that Nigeria spends on diesel, most of which is imported, would be a bill of the past. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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