EVENTS

In October 2018, Cape Town, South Africa will play host to Sub-Saharan Africa’s No.1 Business to Business Power event, which will bring together the senior decision makers from the IPP, PPP and National Power communities across the region. The entire installed generation capacity of Africa’s 48 Sub-Saharan countries is just 68 gigawatts, no more than Spain’s. Up to one-quarter of that capacity is unavailable because of aging plants and poor maintenance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, just one person in five has access to electricity. If current trends continue, fewer than 40 percent of Sub-Saharan African countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050. Per capita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) averages only 124 kilowatt-hours a year and is falling. The rate of consumption is barely 1 percent of that in high-income countries. If entirely allocated to household lighting, it would hardly be enough to power one light bulb per person for three hours a day.

Time for change:

Since 2015, more money has been invested globally in renewable energy than in all other power generation sources combined. In 2017, some 58% of all energy investments went into renewables, while less than 10% has been invested in nuclear. According to Bloomberg’s ‘New Energy Outlook 2017’ report, $10.2-trillion is expected to be invested in new power generation capacity worldwide to 2040. Of this, it is anticipated that 72% will go to renewable energy. In the context of where we are now, with monopolised electricity sectors that have weak financial capacity, we need to seize the opportunity to restructure a new system where national power companies are still a partner in the energy programme; but where underperforming and end-of-life legacy power assets are decommissioned and where Africa takes the lead for renewable & low carbon energy development. South Africa is leading the charge with its Renewable Energy IPP Procurement Programme with 27 PPA’s being signed last April adding 2.3GW of Power to the Grid and a new auction set for November. The new auction will see room for Gas IPP’s to add to the energy mix for the first time of any note.

Time for Action:

The SSA Power Summit hosted by Vale Media Group, the number 1 Sub-Saharan African B2B events company, will provide a platform to address some key challenges of improving aging power infrastructure, developing new power infrastructure, renewable power innovations, gas to power technologies, transmission & distribution solutions, more cost effective temporary power solutions and much more. We will bring together Ministries of Power & Energy, State Power providers, Public – Private partnerships (PPP), Independent Power Producers (IPP’s) and key solution providers to tackle some of the most pressing issues within the African Power industry. In the Sub Continent region power companies will be looking toward the strategy for increased power capacity: Eskom, ZESCO, Electricidade de Moçambique (EdM), NamPower, TANESCO, Southern African Power Pool, Botswana Power Corporation, SNEL, RNT and many more.