Africa's quest for economic development will require the increased availability and use of its abundant energy resources. However, most of its population remains without access to modern energy services and those who have access enjoy an intermittent supply of electricity. Nevertheless, the dominant approach to energy planning continues to be top-down and centralized, emphasizing electricity generation from large dams or fossil-fueled plants and subsequent grid extension to reach more customers, writes *Ogundiran Soumonni.

ONLY about 20% of West African households have access to electricity and the per capita electricity consumption is 88 kWh per year as compared to 11,232 kWh in the U.S. with 100% electrification, that is, more than 120 times as high.

The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, a regional grouping, has established two flagship energy programs in order to meet the expected increase in demand in the region, namely:

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

• Add New
• Search
• RSS

Comments (0)

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Website:

Comment:

Title:

UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Joomla components by Compojoom