Abstraite
Abstract
It is well known that Africa currently has the lowest electricity access rate of any continent, a legacy of minimal colonial investment in electricity distribution. However, that post-1960 access has been highly uneven within and between sub-Saharan African countries, with significant implications for historical economic inequality and growth trends, has largely been left out of existing historical scholarship. This article reviews the history of electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa, examines the evidence for and problems with measuring access historically, and presents four country-specific case studies which identify some of the conditions which enabled growth in access and the consequences for access inequality over time.
Introduction
As scholars attempt to explain sub-Saharan Africa’s struggle to achieve long term growth since 1950, one element which ought to be taken into account in a quantitative way is that the majority of Africans have not had access to an electricity grid and instead rely on kerosene, diesel, and firewood.1 Importantly, this widespread—but not complete—lack of access is not only a marker of underdevelopment, but is also a measure of inequality, which is even greater in times of high fuel prices and increasing deforestation. This article makes both methodological and empirical contributions to the limited existing literature attempting to explain historical electricity access rates and its implications, focusing exclusively on sub-Saharan Africa. It shows why the historical electricity access rates presently available cannot be used together to form a historical series accurately measuring access over time, and that a new database is needed. Even without a complete historical database of access levels, however, this article is able to make an empirical contribution by using lending documents to analyze the evidence for the history of electricity access across four country-specific case studies, and demonstrates the role that government electricity policy and large scale industry, among other factors, played in determining access inequality.
According to the International Energy Agency, modern electrification rates, broadly defined as the percentage of the population with access to electricity, are approximately 32 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, the lowest of any continent.2 The share is heavily biased against rural and toward urban populations, which have rates of 17 percent and 59 percent respectively. Significantly, using the same source, the differences in electrification are just as striking between countries in Africa. Excluding South Africa, which is already significantly electrified3 at about 85 percent, there is a cluster of western African countries with relatively very high rates of 45–75 percent, which includes Côte D’Ivoire,4 Ghana, Cameroon, Gabon, Nigeria, and Senegal. In contrast, there is a cluster of East African countries which have rates of about 25 percent or less, which includes Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Although there is a generally positive relationship between current electrification rates and key economic and social indicators including GDP per capita and urbanization in some African countries, and it is cheaper to electrify urban residents, as with those other indicators these variations can be difficult to explain: there is no existing simple historical explanation for why, for example, Cameroon enjoys electrification of more than 50 percent and Uganda 15 percent, in spite of its clear significance for productivity and inequality in both countries.
Thanks to recent work done by scholars such as Eberhard and his coauthors,5 current electrification rates from international agencies including the International Energy Agency and the World Bank have undergone some scrutiny and are usually the “best available” set of indicators of the current situation, acknowledging that they are incomplete, since access often does not reflect electricity consumption or service quality. Scholars can have far less confidence in historical data on electricity access, which suffers from even more acute measurement problems, and no long-term historical series of electricity access rates across Africa is yet available. This means that it has been challenging to gauge the important and very real effect that uneven electricity access has had on inequality, and from that the effect of this inequality on growth and economic development. Data on historical economic inequality is poor almost everywhere,6and in Africa worst of all. Indeed, there is little historical data about the role of infrastructure and fixed capital more broadly, which can be used to analyze patterns of income in Africa, and, except for railways, the area has often been either ignored or misunderstood by scholars.7 For example, Bowden, Chiripanhura, and Mosley, who identified infrastructure as a key variable in explaining long term trends in African poverty, cite the hydroelectric dam Owen Falls in Uganda as central to “a smallholder-centered infrastructure development plan,”8 while it was actually targeted at powering heavy industry, such as processing copper and cobalt.9
When the data is available, electricity access can be and has been included in traditional measures of economic inequality, so long as the definitions of income or welfare typically measured are broad enough to take into account the various economic impacts of electricity access. To the extent that that the definition of welfare includes “access to public services,” electricity access has often been included.10 Electricity access can also be an “asset indicator” like housing and vehicle ownership, which can also be used in inequality measures, and which also takes into account the sometimes significant upfront connection costs of securing access.11 Where the definition of welfare or income takes into account the varying purchasing power of income within and between countries (which it often cannot, due to lack of data), in Africa electricity access is the major determinate of the amount of household income spent on electricity, with connected households normally having access to cheaper and cleaner energy.12 The historical legacy of electricity generation or transmission assets that an African country might have inherited at the time of independence, or indeed the natural potential for such assets including rivers suitable for hydroelectric power, can also be seen as a factor endowment, which some scholars have identified as driving “structural inequality.”13 More historical data on electricity access is essential for its economic impact to be taken into account in any of these ways in measuring inequality.
The second section of this article therefore reviews the history of African electrification, referring to both the build-up of physical infrastructure and the evolution of the concept of electricity access. The third discusses historical measurements of electricity access in Africa, and their problems. The fourth presents four African case studies of relative “success,” Côte D’Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, and examines when and how they made such comparatively huge gains in electrification. The World Bank was a major lender to Africa power projects in this period and this section uses original historical World Bank lending documents as its principal source. This article recognizes that lending documents, while they can be very valuable as historical records, are inherently limited in their scope and perspective. Due to the limited space available for this article, the use of these lending documents should be supplemented with many other sources in the course of later research. The fifth section concludes with reflections on electricity access as a measure of inequality in Africa, considering how the specific experiences of these western African “success stories” can serve as a basis for future work. The article focuses on electricity access in the African context, and does not compare Africa with other regions, even where many features would be similar, only due to the limited scope of the article. Evidence of the historical consumer experience of electricity access inequality is a fruitful area of future research but is also outside the scope of this paper.
Existing Literature and Explanations
Over approximately the last fifteen years, development banks, economists, and energy agencies have contributed to a considerable existing literature on the nature and extent of current inequality and affordability of electricity access and experiences with rural electrification agencies.14 However, this literature generally does not extend its analysis in depth before the 1990s. With a few notable exceptions, what literature exists on the pan-African history of electricity beyond South Africa is limited, and works on individual African countries tend to focus on the building of electricity generation facilities (including dams) or the evolution of the electricity utility, rather than extending customer connections, and also generally do not cover the entire post-1945 period.15 There have been useful descriptive country-specific additions to this literature, though they are more focused on generation, service quality, or policy than on connection rates specifically.16 Other recent good work on electricity access covers only the pre-1945 period for selected African countries.17 This relative paucity of scholarship stands in sharp contract with other regions: there has been extensive work on the global history of electrification.18 With the occasional exception of the major dam projects, electrification has also been poorly covered in works of African political economy and the development planning literature.19
Though generally not pan-African, notable exceptions to the generally limited literature on African electricity access rates have offered several significant theories which attempt to explain the historical spread of electricity and electricity access in Africa. They are all grounded in a concern about inequality and a conviction that electricity access is a crucial resource whose distribution reflects both the spread of wealth and power at a particular time and influences future patterns of consumption and capital accumulation. They generally share the theme of industry, and specifically foreign-owned industry (sometimes by the former colonial power), both facilitating the expansion of electricity and at times actively inhibiting the spread of electricity access to households. For example, Christie showed that in South Africa, electricity was largely introduced by mine owners in order to mechanize mines and strengthen the owners’ hand against labor. However the electricity access was not extended to use by the laborers, which had a significant impact on later consumption patterns.20 McDonald’s edited work, which is pan-African but includes case studies on South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda covering mostly the last two decades (but which also includes some historical perspective) argues that within Africa foreign-owned industry has had the funding and influence to ensure that it gets preference for what electricity is available, both in general and in times of shortage.21 Isaacman and Isaacman’s recent study of the Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique similarly points out that in spite of having over 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity-generating capacity by the mid-1970s, Mozambicans only had a 5 percent electrification rate by 2003 because its power (majority owned by Portugal) was being sold to South Africa to support, among other uses, industry.22 Some of the most extensive work on the long term pan-African history of electricity generation (not access) has been done by Showers, who was similarly concerned with electricity generation facilities built for colonial and industrial purposes, although she was focused on its impact on the environment.23
The phenomenon of largely foreign-owned and controlled industry facilitating the building of new generation but then competing with households for electricity as residential demand grows is well known in the electricity industry and in the lending and aid agency community, and has had a clear impact on patterns of access inequality. The World Bank, for example, has published on the energy-intensive aluminum industry in sub-Saharan Africa, noting its historical and current implications for households.24 The case studies in this article (and in particular Cameroon and Ghana) provide additional evidence that a clear struggle between households and industry is evident in the political economy of electricity generation, and government-backed sector funding in Africa. However, they also show that this theme alone does not explain all patterns of access for many African countries over time, and that a variety of other factors also played a role (as they did in Nigeria and Côte D’Ivoire, as discussed later in this article).
History of Electrification in Africa
Electricity was first introduced to Africa in the late nineteenth century with self-generated electricity by commercial entities and a few limited projects by colonial governments. Large scale electricity projects and grids were generally developed for industry, mining, and railroads, and for the convenience of European settlers. Showers bluntly states that “in most of colonial Africa, electricity was not seen as important for African or nonurban settlers’ domestic lives.”25 The largest electricity grids were built in British colonies with white settlers.26 Electricity was first generated with small-scale thermal plants, with hydroelectric plants added later, including one built as early as 1897 in the Cape Colony. By 1921, the hydroelectric potential of Africa’s rivers was well documented.27 Generation was expanded in the 1920s and 1930s and the beginning of African electrification (measured as consumption over 1m kWh) has been cited as generally being between 1931–38 for some countries, and 1948 or 1949 for others.28
There was an increase in the building of hydroelectric power plants in Africa from the late 1940s through the 1950s driven by post-Second World War industrial demand, partly supported by the need for rebuilding in Europe. Showers has argued that the increase in large hydroelectric plants beginning in 1950 reflected growing African nationalism.29 It is perhaps more likely that the colonial powers and then the leadership of the newly independent countries immediately understood that power was necessary for industrial as well as political reasons. Major projects included the Inga dam in the Congo (though the biggest plans there were not, and have yet to be, carried out), the Edea plant in Cameroon, and the Kariba dam between modern Zambia and Zimbabwe, whose location more than 500 km away from mines and settlements was important in proving the viability of long distance transmission lines (330 KV) to connect long distance hydroelectric plants with their markets in Africa.30 In several well-known cases (for example, Kariba and Cahora Bassa) these dams were built by colonial governments at great human and environmental cost, under difficult working conditions, and under hastily carried out resettlement plans which displaced many tens of thousands of people.
A United Nations (UN) report prepared for the Economic Commission for Africa over 1962 and 1963 declared itself the “first comprehensive survey and analysis of the production and use of electric energy in Africa” and contains the most comprehensive “baseline” of the state of electrification in Africa up until 1961.31 It was done at a time when most countries on the continent were 80–90 percent rural32 and according to the report, “cash incomes per head of population commonly remain for the mass of population too low at present to support any home use of electricity which, relatively speaking, is still costly.”33 A large part of the study is therefore devoted to the potential for industrial use of electricity, primarily extracting and refining raw materials, with the underlying goal of increasing electricity usage in order to create growth in real national incomes, even if this electricity use did not largely come from households.34 For example, in 1960 in Cameroon, 90 percent of electricity consumption was used to smelt aluminum.35
At the end of the colonial period, access to electricity varied widely across Africa, and perhaps more strikingly, varied within countries to the extent that for most people, electricity was a very limited, urban facility, such as for street lighting and lights for government buildings, with no household access for most people in cities and no access in most rural areas at all. At the time the UN report was written, there had been efforts to extend household and rural use of electricity, but overall its spread was held back by high costs [high transportation costs, low population density (systems were not interconnected)], and low incomes.36 Electricity sectors were a mix of private commercial interests (providing access both to industry and to urban populations) and newly organized, though still very small on almost any metric, public utilities. By the early independence period, most utilities had been nationalized, mirroring a wider global trend.37
After Independence
In the new power-hungry post-1960 world, the World Bank—including the International Development Association (IDA) and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)—and various other development finance institutions emerged as major funders of power projects, from electricity generation to transmission and distribution, for nascent public utilities all over the world, including in Africa. The sector from the start was one of the most significant areas of World Bank lending as power plants were the type of “well defined projects” that the bank was looking for.38 The first World Bank loan for power-generation was granted in 1948 to Chile, while its first loan for power-generation in Africa was approved in 1961 for Uganda.39 By 1971, the Bank had lent $5.3 billion for power projects, almost one third of its total lending.40 Between 1967 and 1971, over 20 percent of World Bank loans for power-generation went to Africa, a total of 17 separate loans totaling $257 million,41 bringing the total to $662 million from 1948 to 1971.42 The First Development Plans of many African countries contained significant allocation to power development and these plans increasingly were done in conjunction with the World Bank. Switching from sponsorship of power generation projects by colonial authorities to international funding bodies like the World Bank was a cultural shift. Some scholars have argued the transition from reliance on colonial planners, some of whom who had long experience with African river basins and their communities, to international consultants hired by World Bank and others on short term consulting projects who took a shorter term and less considered view of environmental and community impacts, sometimes caused an initial ill-founded bias towards hydroelectric power.43 The goal of extending electricity services to greater portions of the population as a goal in and of itself did not feature in the rationale of early World Bank power project funding for Africa. While by the early 1960s some selected African utilities had some “assisted wiring schemes and hire purchase . . . to encourage consumption,” extending coverage was not a high priority for most African governments.44
Indeed, electrification of rural areas, where most of the population resided, was not a significant driver of development finance institution (DFI) funding anywhere in the world—AID and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) were exceptions—until the late 1960s.45 The topic was first addressed46 by the World Bank in a 1971 paper as “village electrification,” where it noted that “in the past, the Bank has not made loans explicitly for such programs, although it has participated indirectly by supporting utilities involved in them; today the Bank is investigating possibilities for giving more active assistance.”47 The first specific World Bank funding for rural electrification began in 1972,48 and by 1975, the Bank produced a paper dedicated to the topic of rural electrification,49 which is widely cited as the beginning of Bank articulation of its efforts in this area.50 In it, Africa is shown to have the highest percentage of rural populations in the world (91 percent) with the lowest proportion of those communities connected to electricity (4 percent, against 15 percent in Asia and 23 percent in Latin America).51 Data on customer connections or populations in communities with electricity coverage were scarcely included in project appraisals and implementation reports, either because they were not seen as important or because the numbers were simply too small to be meaningful. When eventually international attention turned to extending access on a global scale, most scholars agree that the success, speed, and scale of the United States’ experience with both building hydroelectric facilities (most significantly with the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s) and rural electrification52 had a strong impact on development theories about how and why to extend access.
The late 1980s saw the beginning of significant specific funding for extending electrification, which had some success (and will be discussed later in this article). The background to the shift was that in the late 1980s there was the feeling among the development banks that in spite of heavy investment in the preceding decades, African power sector institutions and their performance had deteriorated and were need of reform.53 According to some sources, impressions of low returns from early electrification discouraged further investment by both governments and aid agencies in a time of austerity during Structural Adjustment programs.54 The early and mid-1990s saw a push for power sector reform (including sector unbundling and privatization) all over Africa,55 and the need to extend “electrification rates” became a common focus and justification for World Bank African power sector funding. The 1994 World Development Report was dedicated to “infrastructure for development” and included “households with electricity” as one of its key tracking metrics.56 This power sector reform did cause renewed interest in electrification, and in particular rural electrification, though the extent of its impact has varied between countries.57
Since 1945, electricity from grids has for the most part been distributed by governments across Africa; today, there are fewer than 10 fully privatized electricity utilities in Africa and approximately the same number of management contracts.58 When World Bank did its push for African power sector reform and privatization in the mid- to late 1990s and early 2000s, mostly external economic forces suppressed demand from international buyers (who were focused on buying up newly privatized assets in their own European and American markets). When privatizations of utilities did take place, there were often only one or two bidders willing to participate (for example in Uganda and Cameroon). The vast majority of governments retained control of their utilities and have been unable to invest enough to keep pace with the growth of their networks and sector demand.
A History of Electrification Rates as a Measure in Africa
Electricity access may seem a binary measure, as one is either connected or not, but the development studies literature recognizes that the definition of electricity access can vary widely. This may include not only physical access (either for a household or a community) but also affordability, minimum service, and consumption levels.59 For Africa, due to the lack of data on electricity usage until very recently, these problems of definition are even more acute. There is no single database of electrification rates in Africa over the long term. Recognizing the lack of electricity data in general (not just connection or access rates), the World Bank in 2009 compiled the Africa Support Kiosk for Electric Utilities (ASK) and an accompanying publication, but this only includes data from 1990. In addition to the only very recent starting date of the series, it is missing access data for almost all of the early years for almost all of the countries covered, and acknowledges that there is “inconsistency in data from different sources.”60 Therefore, while there is some historical electricity access data for a range of African countries dating back to the 1950s this data suffers from a number of problems. This section illustrates these problems by referring to a sample of this data for Nigeria, Côte D’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Ghana, which can be seen in Table A1.
Table A1 indicates that a range of sources have suggested that Côte D’Ivoire and Nigeria both had relatively high electrification rates (high teens or 20 percent by the late 1970s) relatively early. Cameroon and Ghana increased their rates in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Beyond that the electrification rates shown in Table A1 indicate very unstable trends and at some points even decline. Other data points are implausible, such as 81 percent electrification in Nigeria in 1984. This reflects the problematic nature, and history, of electrification as a measure. There are three major reasons for this. These reasons would be similar for many other countries around the world, but in some cases are particularly pertinent for Africa.
Firstly, electrification rates were considered somewhat irrelevant before the late 1950s or 1960s in Africa because the numbers were simply too small to be meaningful or impressive, and so sources are sparse. Growth in overall electricity consumption was considered far more important than increasing the number of customer connections. In the 1965 UN report, electrification is frequently cited as consumption per head of population, not per customer, and even then, in spite of claiming some fairly normal levels of electrification (kWh per unit of national product) for those African countries with a higher level of consumption per head, it notes that “the actual consumption per inhabitant in African and European countries should not be directly compared, since large groups within the African populations do not yet consume electricity.”61 Its data on “percentages of populations served or connected in some main towns and urban areas of Africa” in an otherwise comprehensive study only contains data on five countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and these are limited to mostly urban and European homes. For example, for Senegal it includes only European-type “dwellings” in Dakar (96.4 percent of dwellings have electricity), which are only 11,500 dwellings total. The report notes that that “it is outside the principal towns that the problem of economic distribution or isolated generation has everywhere to be solved.”62
The earliest electrification rates in Table A1 come from the annual reports of the national electricity company in Ghana, which only includes it for a few years in the late 1950s. In 1959 the report has to defend a decreasing rate (the justification provided was that the population number used increased),63 and it was disused the following year in 1961,64 possibly to avoid further questions as to why the rate was not increasing. As a consequence, electrification rates were simply not always available. In a 1987 World Bank Cameroon economic memorandum, electrification rates for 1965 are shown as not available, rates are given for 1973, but for the 1986 “Most recent estimate,” rates are again stated as not available.65 In the construction of the infrastructure AICD DHS/MICS Database (2007), researchers found that household surveys did not ask questions on electricity until later than 1990.66 One of the earliest available global cross country electrification datasets is from the 1994 World Development Report, but even that was only able to cite a source with data exclusively from 1984.67
Secondly, estimates or measures of electrification typically measure access to electricity by households or individuals and are therefore highly dependent on estimated population and household size per meter or per connection. A change in the source used between years, or between countries, could have a large impact on the resulting rates. Even in post-1945 Africa historical population estimates can be notoriously problematic, particularly for Nigeria. In addition, if connections do not keep up with population growth or new household formation, the electrification rate declines, making it hard to check if rates are comparable over time. One World Bank report notes for example that by 1979, more than 90 percent of people in Lagos had access to electricity, and “a sizable portion of the urban poor already enjoy at least minimum electricity service, often by up to 40 people sharing one meter,”68 a claim which would clearly distort electrification rates if a lower size of household, or only one household per connection was assumed as frequently as when calculating electrification rates. The disparity between electrification rates reported by national utilities, based on their numbers of meters, and the higher numbers of people who report having electricity access in national census surveys, most likely reflects multiple informal connections through the same meter.69 Depending on the utility and the time period some individual families also have multiple meters. In Cameroon during some of the period examined, each household had up to three meters, with separate meters for lighting and other purposes.70
Thirdly, the sources in Table A1 show that the definition of electrification used differs significantly between sources, with a definition frequently not provided at all. Generally, electrification as a rate is a measure of access. In some cases, it is measured either as the percentage of the population with a connection, or those living in a community which has electricity access, but to which they may not be able to afford an individual connection, whereas it is sometimes measured elsewhere as the percentage of household dwellings with a connection, though in some countries, such as the Côte D’Ivoire, national electrification targets focused on covered areas, not connections per household.71 This is particularly evident in Banerjee, et al., cited in Table A1, which records rates for the early 1990s, late 1990s, and early 2000s, and defines access as coverage, and so may be inflated compared to the other estimates.
By far most of the available sources for historical access rates come from World Bank lending documents or from development institution related publications, and for that reason they make up many of the sources referenced in Table A1. They suggest one possible broad trend: the move during the 1990s, 2000s, and onwards away from measuring access as a percentage of household connections of the total population, toward what appears in some cases to be the percentage of households who live in covered areas. This accounting change alone could account for some of the general growth in access rates shown in the table over time, in spite of population and new household growth, and the relatively small number of new connections that were being added during even large rural electrification programs in the 1990s. Using UN population statistics for the period from 1950 to 2010,72 and an estimated household size of 10, through most of the 1990s Nigeria would have to have been adding almost a quarter of a million new connections per year, and for the other countries in Table A1 this number would have to have been almost 40,000; both figures are far higher than the new connections typically reached in any one year by rural electrification programs or utilities.
There may be a political reason for this shift in definition. In many countries electrification rates (per person or household with a connection) must have been decreasing, but coverage areas were generally always increasing and so provided a more achievable goal for electrification projects which produced greater apparent progress. In addition, over time this “access” approach to electrification was also an increasingly accurate measure of actual possibility of access, since at the beginning of the post-1945 period when connections were concentrated in urban areas, coverage for urban dwellers was less meaningful if they did not have a connection. When coverage was extended to rural areas with less population density, the likelihood that access meant an actual connection may have been higher.
The Political Economy of High Access Rates, 1950–2000
In lieu of access to a comprehensive database of electricity access across Africa which can take into account the measurement and presentation problems described earlier in this article, this section uses lender documents and other qualitative material to examine the historical pattern of access rates in four country case studies, and to identify the important developments in the sector. The case studies demonstrate that access was determined by a mixture of government institutional capacity, a struggle over government policy and investment, and exogenous factors including fuel prices, drought, and international funding trends, which merit some upfront discussion.
First, as no western African countries had extensive power generation in 1950, most late colonial and newly independent countries initially invested in electricity generation plants. The examples of Ghana and Cameroon demonstrate that having a single, large industrial off-taker (long term contracted buyer) for a hydroelectric plant helped finance power plants, since domestic demand was not seen as a significant driver of demand or growth. Secondly, once this initial capacity was built and as demand for power grew, governments had to decide whether to (in some cases continue to) prioritize industrial or domestic access, and whether to consolidate existing access or extend access, which often involved subsidizing connection charges in rural areas. Faced with these dilemmas, these case studies show that almost all countries apart from Côte D’Ivoire, up until the 1990s, chose to prioritize existing urban and high-income users and not to extend access widely. Thirdly, the variation between tariff levels and alternative fuel prices was the main determinate of inequality in electricity access (as opposed to, for example, differential service levels between rural and urban areas, as rural areas simply were not connected until very recently).
Sources used include extensive historical World Bank lending documents, major lenders to the sector in each country, and some secondary material available. There are potential problems with relying principally on World Bank documents: the perspective is that of a development bank whose interests and policies were themselves changing over time. They certainly exclude the perspectives of customers, suppliers, government officials, and even those who worked in the utilities themselves.
As the countries in this “success” subset are all neighbors in western Africa, and although they are a mix between former British and French colonies, there is a framework of historical events and processes common to all four countries: a colonial inheritance of a plantation or cash crop agricultural economy, some occasional or regular political instability but not continuous civil war, independence in the late 1950s/early 1960s and initial strong agricultural prices, exposure to high inflation during the 1970s oil boom (with a corresponding boom in government revenues in those oil rich countries), followed by economic stagnation and in some cases decline in the 1980s, as well as periodic droughts, of which one in 1983–1984 was very significant. Although each country appeared to have arrived at roughly similar electrification access levels by 2010, Côte D’Ivoire was clearly the most successful and Nigeria the least, relative to the resources they had available for the sector. Ghana and Cameroon were fairly similar, with Ghana seeming to benefit from more international funding attention to electrification during the 1990s, and Cameroon from sector reform and privatization in late 1990s and early 2000s.
Côte D’Ivoire
In terms of physical electricity assets, Côte D’Ivoire had a relatively modest colonial heritage when it achieved independence from France, including a small hydroelectric dam and a public utility, Energie Electrique de Côte D’Ivoire (EECI), founded in 1952.73 However, Côte D’Ivoire also had a growing class of rich planters of cash and other crops whose affordability and political leverage may have been important in driving the expansion of power access. Lending documents confirm that the government exhibited a consistent political commitment to extending domestic electrification. This is not to argue that the early post-independence regimes in Côte D’Ivoire always exhibited egalitarian or inclusive governance strategies, but political analyses of this period should certainly take infrastructure investment policies, including that of electricity, into account.74
Between 1960 and 1977 the number of towns and villages with access to electricity increased from just four to 366, with demand from outside the capital increasing to 35 percent of total consumption.75 A surcharge on bills to fund rural electrification was added in 1969.76 Although this surcharge was not large enough to pay for all new connections, it illustrated government attention; approximately 20,000 new customers were being added every year by the late 1970s.77 By 1977, the “population with connections” of 17 percent78 must have been one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa at the time. Indeed, during the 1970s and 1980s the Côte D’Ivoire was known in West Africa for using such strategies as holding official celebrations of the national day in a different region each year, to help encourage implementation of the electrification plan for that region in time for the events.79 Available evidence from Table A1 suggests that access reached more than 40 percent (“percent with access to electricity”) by 1980. All these metrics indicate that Côte D’Ivoire had high levels of early access, using definitions of household access rather than households in covered areas, suggesting that it was at least a decade ahead of the other case studies.
Two major events occurred in the 1980s which materially slowed down electrification. The first was the prolonged recession from 1979;80 the second was the drought of 1982–84. This caused reduced capacity at the hydroelectric plants and the need for more expensive thermal generation. Electrification efforts were temporarily frozen.81 Only 2,700 new users were connected between 1985 and 1988.82 However, the power sector reform of 1990 introduced the private sector into distribution and EECI’s assets were then managed by a private utility operator, Compagnie Ivoirienne d’Electricite (CIE).83 Since the mid-1990s, Côte D’Ivoire has again been seen as a successful model of continued growth in electrification.84 Features of its program have been significant donor funding, “electrification coverage” approach (progress in number of villages connected, not connections themselves), and only connecting solid buildings and streets laid out in a town plan.85
Cameroon
The primary driver of the electricity sector in Cameroon over almost the entire post-1945 period was the building of an aluminum smelter, Alucam, in the 1950s, a joint venture with the Government of Cameroon. The support of a large buyer of electricity, although it had long term low tariffs relative to other customers,86 enabled the country to complete a large hydroelectric project in 1953,87 very early compared to other African countries. However, extending electrification was not a major government priority in the early decades after independence, reflected in part by an absence of published data on connections. As late as 2001 a report found that “No reliable data series have been found regarding historical energy consumption for the southern system [which includes the commercial and political capitals of Douala and Yaoundé respectively] and as a whole.”88
Cameroon suffered drought in the 1970s, and parts of the smelter had to be shut.89 In the electricity shortages of the late 1970s increasing electrification outside of the main cities again was not considered a priority by either the World Bank or the government.90 In 1976 there was very little information about the extent of access, and in World Bank project documents in which staff had to fill in the percentage of dwellings with access to electricity for 1960, 1970, and “a more recent estimate,” they simply left the form blank.91 Available evidence on electrification (in Table A1) indicates that Cameroon had very low levels of electricity access (6 percent) in the mid-1980s. Alucam took up almost all the available capacity and left little room for other industries or households.92
Only a very modest number of customers were added to the system before the early 1990s, and in the almost three decades from 1965 onward, national utility SONEL customers had only increased from 10,820 to 97,390 in Douala and 6,117 to 65,813 in Yaoundé.93 The electrification program in Cameroon was reorganized as part of the World Bank energy sector reforms of the late 1990s which led to the privatization of SONEL in 2001. Although this privatization had some initial difficulties,94 in the longer term it was a huge success for extending customer connections. The newly private AES-Sonel connected about 25,000 customers per year between 2002–2007 and over 50,000 in 2007, and currently has about 800,000 connections, growing at about 60,000 new customers per year. However, although the smelter now uses only about 30 percent of Cameroon’s electricity, its long-term contracts mean that it gets preference on available electricity and only pays for about 10 percent of sector revenues, and this heavy public subsidy is therefore a factor in the continued inequality in this sector.
Nigeria
The colonial legacy of electrification was relatively impressive in Nigeria, and by independence in the 1960s Nigeria had a fairly healthy power sector which was executing a series of large hydroelectric projects, despite the challenge of a population eight times larger than Ghana or Cameroon, and fourteen times that of the Côte D’Ivoire.95 The boom in petroleum revenues from the 1970s, combined with international funding,96 meant that Nigeria spent about $3 billion on adding new generation capacity during the 1980s, but it also, uniquely, failed to maintain large swathes of its existing capacity.97 By the late 1980s the sector was “on the verge of total collapse.”98 In reaction, captive (self-generated, on an individual company, compound or household level) power became a “shadow utility” which now may provide more capacity than the national utility.99
There is little reliable data on electrification, and in this context the evidence in Table A1 is the least reliable for Nigeria. Olukoju noted that “the absence of precise [historical customer] figures is a pointer to the chaotic nature of the operations of NEPA [the national utility] since its inception.”100 The Bank cited a low two million connected out of a population of 68 million in 1972101 and amidst the chaos of the 1980s, electrification was not a priority. In 1989 Kuruk wrote that there was “rather limited supply in parts of the country’s interior, and no supply at all in a majority of the country.”102 Even in the late 1980s, the main source of energy for rural Nigerians was still wood fuel, especially northern towns where kerosene was not always available.103 There were also no tariff increases between 1966 and 1977,104 and again from 1979 to 1989,105 creating a hidden subsidy for connected customers during a period of high inflation, a major driver of inequality between those connected (when they got service) and those who had to rely on increasingly expensive alternative fuels.
Ghana
There was some colonial electricity infrastructure available at independence106 but significant progress in the sector came in the form of a series of large hydroelectric projects that were begun after independence and which were driven, as in Cameroon, by one large industrial consumer of electricity—an aluminum smelter. Construction started on the first one in the 1960s107 and gave Valco (Volta Aluminum Company)—the industrial buyer—a 30-year energy contract at “little more than cost price.”108 The cost of the hydroelectric plant was estimated at £G65 million, almost the GDP of Ghana.109 The resulting capacity was large enough not only for Ghana but also for export to Benin and Togo and eventually the Côte D’Ivoire from 1981.
However, the sophistication of the dam project did not do much to extend access from the 1960s through the 1980s. From 1961 to 1966, domestic connections increased only about 4,100 per year on average, ending in 1966 at 59,300.110 By 1977 only 100 towns—covering 25 percent of the population—had a public electricity supply. Of the rural population covered, only 10 percent were connected to the grid.111 There was “no explicit long-term program of rural electrification for the country as a whole.”112 For those who were connected however, and with large consequences for inequality, by the late 1970s, tariffs had fallen far below the marginal cost of electricity, creating another hidden subsidy.113 By 1986 the domestic utility ECG still only had about 240,000 customers, and only 20,000 in rural areas.114 Deforestation, due to consumption of fuel wood, especially in the north, was an urgent problem. In 1986 domestic tariffs were less than US3 cents/kWh, while the cost of diesel generation was three times as much.115 As of 1986, government efforts at rural electrification had been “discontinued for many years for lack of funds.”116 There was an actual decline in customer connections in 1986 and 1987.117
Ghana began to receive many offers of bilateral funding for studies and implementation of electrification programs. In 1989 a 30-year plan was developed (and paid for partly from World Bank funding) to coordinate the efforts.118 That same year, the resulting National Electrification Scheme (NES) was implemented and almost all the funds, even as of 2007, had come from donors.119 The first phase of NES concluded in 2000. There was almost 100 percent achievement of the targeted number of communities electrified (432 out of 434).120 By 1993 the increased focus had an impact—ECG customers had jumped to 324,000 (78 percent residential) plus another 30,000 on the Northern Grid.121 A second phase started in 2001.122 By 2007, ECG had 1.4 million customers and the Northern Grid had 230,000 customers, a clear the success for the program.
Electrification and Access Inequality
All four of the country case studies presented here have some of the better GDP per capita levels in sub-Saharan Africa, but this masks significant inequalities and differences in living standards and infrastructure historically, and this can be seen in the power sector. In broad terms, the connection between the causes of a “successful” power sector and the results can be difficult to disaggregate and this article can only begin to draw preliminary conclusions. In this group of four, Nigeria should be seen, in its far greater size, history, and mineral wealth, as a significant exception. As might be expected, it had its own quite different dynamics and challenges. It began the period with a relatively advanced power sector and ended it with possibly the weakest, in spite of its superior wealth to the other three countries. Ghana struggled to get its wider population electricity access, and may not have been part of this group of “success stories,” except that it was able to implement an innovative donor program in electrification, and has since benefitted significantly. This development occurred in tandem with its increasingly diversified economy and political stability, far greater than its neighbor Nigeria. Côte D’Ivoire is today considered one of most prosperous countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and its early advances in power generation and access have likely had a strong role in this, though they also reflect a pre-existing prosperous and diversified political economy which also helped make this possible. Cameroon is a less prosperous but highly stable and relatively diverse economy, which was supported by its early advances in power generation. However, its success in electricity access was likely the result of policy initiatives and at least partly due to the role of the private sector, which itself potentially resulted from the country’s early political stability. Each of these case studies would be fruitful areas for further research.
The previous section and its case studies show that national planning in electrification reflected the need to manage a scarce resource—funding and available electricity—but also economic and political dynamics and imbalances, a finding which should be built on in future African economic and political historical research. As a scarce resource, which was difficult to finance, electricity was rationed and channeled to the most politically powerful and those most able to pay. The easiest way to do this was by not electrifying the population in the first place. This was balanced against the political popularity of extending electrification, which made electrification also integral to patterns of democracy and responsive government, of which Côte D’Ivoire is an example. In addition, as the case of Ghana showed, donor interest in funding electrification played an important role in causing a break in these typical dynamics and rapidly increasing electrification in spite of lack of funds or competing political interests.
Electrification is an essential, though limited and often problematic, measure of inequality. Being connected to an electricity grid was definitely better than not being connected, but knowing the cost of various forms of fuel and electricity tariffs, as well as the sufficiency of power available on the system at any given point in time is necessary to quantify the difference in value between being connected or not. Electrification was of most benefit to those connected when the difference between tariff levels per unit of power and the price and availability of alternative fuels, most importantly kerosene, diesel and wood fuels, was greatest. Electrification helpfully captures the proportion of those who are exposed to the gap between the prices, but not the quantum of the gap. The relative prices fluctuated over time, with the gap growing from the mid-1970s during the oil price rises, when not only were fuel prices increasing, but for political reasons tariffs were frozen in most of the countries examined, which meant that they declined in real terms. Those connected to the grid were also advantaged because they tended to benefit from low-cost electricity from hydroelectric power, the cost of which was insulated from fuel prices. There was generally a tariff correction in the mid-1980s which coincided with currency devaluation, but generally tariffs lagged behind inflation and certainly the long-run marginal cost of electricity production. In addition, due to lack of institutional capacity, the utilities described had very low collection rates, which meant that in addition to enjoying low tariffs, often those connected found ways of not paying their bills at all.
However, electrification has a major weakness as a measure of inequality, since it does not always capture what can be massive differences in service levels. Especially in Africa, where rural access was often difficult, outages of service in rural areas service were frequently not attended to. In periods of limited grid power capacity, electrification also does not capture differential load shedding (power outages) in different areas, which frequently favored cities and commercial areas, and particularly industrial buyers of power such as the smelters in Ghana and Cameroon. It also does not take into account the impact of customers being charged for their own connection to the grid, which are relatively far higher for households than large businesses as a proportion of their energy costs, and which prove to be a major barrier to electrification when they are not subsidized.123 These varying problems are generally not mentioned in the case studies examined here, because they do not seem to have been major concerns of the World Bank lending documents on which they are based, though they were important for inequality. Electrification also cannot be relied on as the only indicator of government commitment to reducing inequality, since many of the African governments mentioned here focused on other methods of reducing inequality after independence, such as improving the transportation infrastructure to provide access to export markets.
As case studies given here demonstrate, extending electricity access in Africa during this period was primarily a government task, even if there might have been room for private-sector involvement. Governments were faced with numerous dilemmas, and could only prioritize certain areas at the expense of others. For example, many chose to prioritize additional generation over the distribution network, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article but deserve much greater study. The rationale was often that there was little purpose in connecting customers who could not be adequately serviced with power, but it was also inherently a political decision and it is clear from this study that influence of politically powerful groups had a major impact on electrification trends. Not making power available more widely, even with the consequence of reduced service levels, in itself could perpetuate inequality while also protecting and prioritizing key industrial and commercial enterprises. The aluminum smelters in Ghana and Cameroon are examples of such influential commercial entities, whereas in the Côte D’Ivoire, a far wider subset of the population seemed to be able to command government funding to provide them with electricity.
Government choices in funding the power sector also highlight the role of institutional capacity in inequality of electricity access. In many African countries with a poor ability to execute large technical projects during this period, above all in Nigeria, large infrastructure projects such as building new generation capacity got completed because they relied on international contractors. Maintaining existing generation capacity and improving the distribution network required greater domestic institutional capability than local utilities and national power companies could supply.
Although institutional capacity was limited, and all of the countries considered here exhibited major variations in political stability over time, between and within countries, long term energy sector plans were still carried out to a significant degree, including accessing large scale funding from development finance institutions and even, increasingly in most of the countries examined, private sector funding. Now since about 2013, for the first time in many parts of Africa, small scale renewable sources of energy such as solar panels are cost-competitive with diesel generators and kerosene. Many households with no connection to an electricity grid now have, or will soon have, a solar home system which can supply power to basic appliances. However, even these innovations are not yet a complete substitute either in cost or in quality of service for a grid connection.124 Individuals and especially businesses will still be reliant on national utilities or their expensive self-generated thermal power substitutes for reliable electricity for the immediate future. The gulf between those connected to the grid, and those who are not, remains as large and as important as ever.
Acknowledgment
The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Jean David Bile, Gareth Austin, Erik Green, Alexander Moradi, William Freund, Aaron Graham, and the attendees of the African Economic History Workshop 2013 at the University of Lund for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Appendix
Examples of Cited National Electrification Rates in Four Africa Countries 1958–2010
Footnotes
↵1. Note that firewood is also used for cooking, which can also occur when a household is connected to an electricity grid.
↵2. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2015—Electricity Access Database. World Energy Outlook 2015—Methodology for Energy Access Analysis (2015), accessed 29 January, 2016, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2015/EnergyAccess_Methodology_2015.pdf. Access defined at those who live in households with a supply connection and a minimum consumption of electricity, which increases over time.
↵3. B. Bekker, A. Eberhard, T. Gaunt, and A. Marquard, “South Africa’s Rapid Electrification Programme: Policy, Institutional, Planning, Financing and Technical Innovations,” Energy Policy (2008): 36.
↵4. World Bank, “Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL),” Global Electrification database. Data as of 2012. Accessed 30 January 2016, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS. The Côte d’Ivoire electrification rate is currently estimated at 55.6 percent by the World Bank, the latest IEA estimate is an outlier of the most current (2012/2013) estimates for Côte d’Ivoire.
↵5. For example, A. Eberhard, O. Rosnes, M. Shkaratan, and H. Vennemo, Africa’s Power Infrastructure: Investment, Integration, Efficiency (Washington D.C.: World Bank Publications, 2011).
↵6. W. Easterly, “Inequality Does Cause Underdevelopment: Insights from a New Instrument,” Journal of Development Economics 84 (2007): 2.
↵7. G. Austin, “Resources, Techniques and Strategies South of the Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective on African Economic Development, 1500–2000,” Economic History Review 61, no. 3 (2002): 594, 597.
↵8. S. Bowden, B. Chiripanhura, and P. Mosley, “Measuring and Explaining Poverty in Six African Countries: A Long-Period Approach,” Journal of International Development (2008): 1068.
↵9. J. Hall, “Some Aspects of Economic Development in Uganda,” African Affairs 51, 203 (1952): 126–127, 130–131.
↵10. F. Cowell, Measuring Inequality, LSE Perspectives in Economic Analyses Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 6.
↵11. D. McKenzie, “Measuring Inequality with Asset Indicators,” Journal of Population Economics 18, no. 2 (2005): 229–260.
↵12. H. Winkler, A. Simoes, E. La Rovere, M. Alam, A. Rahman and S. Mwakasonda, “Access and Affordability of Electricity in Developing Countries,” World Development 39, no. 6 (2011): 1037–1050.
↵13. Easterly, “Inequality Does Cause Underdevelopment,” 3.
↵14. See A. Eberhard, V. Foster, C. Briceno-Garmendia, F. Ouedraogo, D. Camos, and M. Shkartan, “Underpowered: the State of the Power Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), Background Paper 6 (World Bank, 2008); E. Crousillat, R. Hamilton, and P. Antmann, “Addressing the Electricity Access Gap: Background Paper for the World Bank Group Energy Sector Strategy” (Washington D.C.: World Bank Publication, 2010); S. Pachauri and A. Brew-Hammon (convening lead authors), “Energy Access for Development,”in Global Energy Assessment: Toward a Sustainable Future, eds. Thomas B., Johansson, Anand Prabhakar Patwardhan, Nebojša Nakičenovič, and Luis Gomez-Echeverri (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1401–1458. Pachauri and Brew-Hammon discusses differences in access rates across Africa but similarly does not take much of a view beyond the success of various rural electrification programs from the 1990s.
↵15. Some country case studies mostly cover the experience of electricity consumers from the power sector reforms of the 1990s through to the mid-2000s. See R. Ghanadan, “Connected Geographies and Struggles over Access: Electricity Commercialisation in Tanzania,” in Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Power Grid, ed. D. McDonald, (London: Earthscan, 2009), 400–436.
↵16. See A. Olukoju, Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, 1861–2000, (Ibadan: Institut français de recherche en Afrique, 2003); A. Olukoju, “ ‘Never Expect Power Always: Electricity Consumers’ Response to Monopoly, Corruption and Inefficient Services in Nigeria,” African Affairs, 103, 410 (2004): 51–71; P. Kuruk, “Performance of Electric Utilities in Developing Countries: The Ghanaian and Nigerian Experience,” 11 Loy. L.A. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev, vol. 11 (1989): 515–542; E. Simpson, “Electricity Production in Nigeria,” Economic Geography, 45, no. 3 (1969); M. Manafa, Electricity Development in Nigeria 1896–1972 (Yaba, Nigeria: Raheem Publishers 1979), as cited in Kuruk (1989); C. Gore, “Electricity and Privatization in Uganda: the Origins of the Crisis and Problems with the Response,” in Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Power Grid, ed. D. McDonald, (London: Earthscan, 2009), 359–399; K. Bayliss and B. Fine, eds. Privatisation and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa (Basingstoke: Springer, 2007).
↵17. M. Chikowero, “Subalternating Currents: Electrification and Power Politics in Bulawayo, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1894–1939,” Journal of Southern African Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 287–306.
↵18. W. Hausman, P. Hertner, and M. Wilkins, Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1878–2007 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); D. Morton, “Reviewing the History of Electric Power and Electrification,” Endeavour 26, no. 2 (2002): 60–63.
↵19. W. Adams, Wasting the Rain: Rivers, People and Planning in Africa (London: Earthscan, 1992); A. Isaacman and B. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2013). J. Tischler, Light and Power for a Multi-Racial Nation: The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation (Basingstoke: Springer, 2013); F. Misser, La Saga d’Inga: l’Histoire des Barrages du Fleuve Congo, Cahiers Africains—Afrika Studies 83 (Paris: Musee royal de l’Afrique centrale et L’Harmattan, 2013).
↵20. R. Christie, Electricity, Industry and Class in South Africa (London: Macmillan and St Anthony’s College, Oxford, 1984).
↵21. D. McDonald, ed., Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Power Grid (London: Earthscan, 2009).
↵22. Isaacman and Isaacman, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development, 161.
↵23. K. Showers, “Water scarcity and Urban Africa: An Overview of Urban-Rural Water Linkages,” World Development 30, no. 4 (2002), 621–648; K. Showers, “Electrifying Africa: An Environmental History with Policy Implications,” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 93, no. 3 (2011), 193–221.
↵24. C. Husband, G. McMahon, and P. van der Veen, “The Aluminium Industry in West and Central Africa: Lessons Learned and Prospects for the Future,” World Bank, Oil, Gas and Mining Policy Division Working Paper, Extractive Industries and Development Series #13 (2009).
↵25. Showers, “Electrifying Africa,” 194–195.
↵26. ibid., 195.
↵27. ibid., 198.
↵28. United Nations, Situations, Trends and Prospects of Electric Power Supply in Africa, United Nations Publication, Sales No. 65.II.K.2 (1965), 46.
↵29. Showers, “Electrifying Africa,” 201.
↵30. ibid., 199.
↵31. United Nations, Situations, Trends and Prospects, i.
↵32. ibid., 2.
↵33. ibid., 48.
↵34. ibid., 51.
↵35. ibid., 46.
↵36. ibid., 5.
↵37. A. Covarrubias, Lending for Electric Power in Sub Saharan Africa (Washington D.C.: World Bank Publications, 1996), 26.
↵38. A. Alacevich, The Political Economy of the World Bank: The Early Years (Palo Alto: World Bank Publications, 2009), 6.
↵39. Covarrubias, Lending for Electric Power, 28.
↵40. World Bank, “Electric Power: Sector Working Paper,” Report No. 10271 (Washington, D.C., 1971), 3.
↵41. ibid., 9.
↵42. ibid., 20.
↵43. H. Hoag and M. Ohman, “Turning Water into Power: Debates over the Development of Tanzania’s Rufiji River basin, 1945–1985,” Technology and Culture 49, no. 3 (2008): 624–651.
↵44. United Nations, Situations, Trends and Prospects, 49.
↵45. World Bank, “Rural electrification: A World Bank Paper,” PUB-517 (1975), 64.
↵46. ibid.
↵47. World Bank, “Electric Power: Sector Working Paper,” 14–15.
↵48. H. Collier, Developing Electric Power: Thirty Years of World Bank Experience, No. PB-86-108032/XAB. (Washington, D.C.: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1984), 104.
↵49. World Bank, “Rural electrification.”
↵50. Collier, Developing Electric Power, 16, 104.
↵51. World Bank, “Rural electrification,” 17.
↵52. L. Pellegrini and L. Tasciotto, “Rural Electrification Now and Then: Comparing Contemporary Challenges in Developing Countries to the USA’s Experience in Retrospect,” Forum for Development Studies 40, no. 1 (2012), 153–176.
↵53. Covarrubias, Lending for Electric Power, 29.
↵54. T. Bernard, “Impact Analysis of Rural Electrification Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa,” The World Bank Research Observer 27, no. 1 (2010), 36–37.
↵55. S. Karekezi and J. Kimani, “Status of Power Sector Reform in Africa: Impact on the Poor,” Energy Policy 30, 11–12 (2002): 923–945; C. Haanyika, “Rural Electrification Policy and Institutional Linkages,” Energy Policy 34, no. 17 (2006), 2981–2984; K. Bayliss and B. Fine, “Rethinking the Rethink: The World Bank and Privatization” in K. Bayliss and B. Fine, eds. Privatisation and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa (Basingstoke: Springer, 2007).
↵56. World Bank, World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 224–225.
↵57. Haanyika, “Rural electrification policy,” 2985. It argues that in some cases (Kenya) the reforms had a negative impact on rural electrification, and in others (Senegal and Uganda) positive, but does not suggest why or how in detail.
↵58. Eberhard, Rosnes, Shkaratan, and Vennemo, Africa’s Power Infrastructure, 261–266. As of 2006.
↵59. S. Pachauri, “Reaching an International Consensus on Defining Modern Energy Access,” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 3, no. 4 (2011), 235–240; Pachauri and Brew-Hammon, Energy Access for Development, 1424.
↵60. V. S. N. Tallapragada, M. Shkaratan, A. Izaguirre, J. Helleranta, S. Rahman, and S. Bergman, Monitoring Performance of Electric Utilities: Indicators and Benchmarking in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2009), 5.
↵61. United Nations, Situations, Trends and Prospects, 50–51.
↵62. ibid., 49, 58.
↵63. Ghana Electricity Department Annual Report for 1959–60, (Accra, 1963), 7.
↵64. Ghana Electricity Department Annual Report for the period July 1, 1960–June 30, 1961, (Accra, 1963), 4–5.
↵65. World Bank, “Cameroon Country Economic Memorandum,” Report No. 6395-CM, 19 February 1987, g.
↵66. S. Banerjee, Q. Wodon, A. Diallo, T. Pushak, E. Uddin, C. Tsimpo, and V. Foster, Access, Affordability, and Alternatives: Modern Infrastructure Services in Africa (World Bank, 2008), Table A1.2.5 8–9.
↵67. World Bank, World Development Report, 224–225, 247.
↵68. The World Bank, “Federal Republic of Nigeria, Staff Appraisal Report, Lagos Power Distribution Project,” Report No. 2502-UNI (1 October 1979), 34.
↵69. J. D. Bile, AES-Sonel (Cameroon national utility), interview with author, 9 December 2013.
↵70. ibid.
↵71. W. Mostert, “Review of Experiences with Rural Electrification Agencies: Lessons for Africa,” EUEI-PDF, Draft 24 August 2008.
↵72. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, DVD Edition (New York, 2013).
↵73. World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report, First Power Project, Republic of Ivory Coast,” 18 June 1980, 2, 4.
↵74. C. Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 177–234.
↵75. World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report,” 2.
↵76. ibid., Annex 1, 28.
↵77. ibid., Annex 2, 41.
↵78. ibid., Annex 1, 40.
↵79. J. D. Bile, AES-Sonel (Cameroon national utility), interview with author, 30 October 2013.
↵80. World Bank, “Project Completion Report, Côte D’Ivoire, First Power Project,” 12 April 1991, Report No. 9492, 2.
↵81. ibid.
↵82. Mostert, “Review of Experiences with Rural Electrification Agencies,” Annex 1.7, 175.
↵83. L. Jones, Y. Jammal, and N. Gokgur, Impact of Privatization in Côte D’Ivoire, Boston Institute for Developing Economies (BIDE), Report prepared for Privatization Committee (2002), I-13-I-14.
↵84. Mostert, “Review of Experiences with Rural Electrification Agencies,” 9.
↵85. ibid., Annex 1.7, 172, 176.
↵86. M. Laparra, and I. Grinberg, I, Alucam: an African Destiny (Mirabeau,Vaucluse: REF.2C éditions, 2007): REF.2C éd., 112.
↵87. “Africa Gas Initiative: Cameroon, Volume III,” ESM240, Vol. 3, Report 240/01, February 2001, 26.
↵88. ibid., 28.
↵89. R. Riddell, Manufacturing Africa: Performance and Prospects of Seven Countries in Sub Saharan Africa (London: Currey1990), 112.
↵90. World Bank, “Proposals for a Medium-Term Public Development Program a Special Study: Cameroon,” Report No. 1097a-CM, 23 April 1976, 59.
↵91. World Bank, “Report and recommendation of the President of the International Development Association to the Executive Directors on a proposed credit to the United Republic of Cameroon for a Technical Assistance Project,” Report No. P-1951-CM, 8 December 1976, Table 3A.
↵92. “Africa Gas Initiative: Cameroon,” 2001, 28.
↵93. Laparra and Grinberg, Alucam, 120.
↵94. B. Fine, and K. Bayliss, “Water and Electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in K. Bayliss and B. Fine, eds. Privatisation and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa (Basingstoke: Springer, 2007), 115–116.
↵95. United Nations, World Population Prospects.
↵96. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Development Association, “Appraisal of the Fourth Power Project, National Electric Power Authority, Nigeria,” Report No. PU-98, 16 June 1972, 1.
↵97. World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Power System Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project,” Report No. 7607-UNI, 28 July 1989, Annex 3-1, 1, 5.
↵98. ibid., 3–4; World Bank, “Implementation Completion Report, Government of Nigeria, Power System Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project (Loan 3116-UNI),” Report No. 16825, 30 June 1997, 1–6.
↵99. World Bank, “Power System Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project,” 1989, 3–4; ESMAP, World Bank, “Nigeria: Issues and Options in the Energy Sector,” July 1993, Report No. 11672-UNI, xx.
↵100. Olukoju, “ ‘Never Expect Power Always,’ ” 54.
↵101. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Development Association, “Appraisal of the Fourth Power Project, National Electric Power Authority, Nigeria,” Report No. PU-98, 16 June 1972, 3.
↵102. Kuruk, “Performance of Electric Utilities in Developing Countries,” 519.
↵103. World Bank, “Power System Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project,” 1989, 1; ESMAP, “Nigeria: Issues and Options,” xxii, 54.
↵104. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “Appraisal of the Fourth Power Project,” 4–5.
↵105. World Bank, “Power System Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project,” 3–4.
↵106. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “Appraisal of the Volta River Hydroelectric Project, Ghana,” Report No. TO-281a, 30 August 1961, 5; International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “Appraisal of the Distribution Expansion and Development Program of The Electricity Corporation of Ghana,” Report No. TO-629a, 27 May 1968, 2; Annual Report of the Ghana Government Electricity Department for the period July, 1956 to June, 1957 (Accra, 1958), Preamble.
↵107. T. Killick, “The Volta River Project,” in eds. W. Birmingham, I. Neustadt and E. Omaboe, A Study of Contemporary Ghana (Vol. 1) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), 391–393; International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “Appraisal of the Distribution Expansion and Development Program,” 1968, 2–3.
↵108. Killick, “The Volta River Project,” 402–403.
↵109. ibid., 394.
↵110. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, “Appraisal of the Distribution Expansion,” 1968, 2.
↵111. World Bank, “Ghana: Electricity Corporation of Ghana (ECG); appraisal of the Third Power Project,” Report No. 1196a-GH, 1 March 1977, 3.
↵112. ibid., 6.
↵113. ibid., ii, 2.
↵114. World Bank, “Ghana: Issues and Options in the Energy Sector,” Report No. 6234-GH [numbers unclear], November 1986, Report of the Joint UNDP/World Bank Energy Sector Assessment Program, 11, 13.
↵115. ibid., 24.
↵116. ibid., viii.
↵117. Electricity Corporation of Ghana, Twentieth Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31st December, 1987 (Accra, 1987), 19, also accompanying ECG statistical yearbook 1987, 3–4.
↵118. World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report, Republic of Ghana, Electricity Corporation of Ghana, Fifth Power Project,” 19 July 1989, Report No. 7405-GH, 6.
↵119. World Bank, “Project appraisal document on a proposed credit in the amount of SDR 59.1 million (US$90 million equivalent) and a proposed grant from the Global Environmental Facility Trust Fund in the amount of $5.5 million to the Republic of Ghana for an Energy development and access project,” 25 June 2007, Report No. 39713-GH, 34–35.
↵120. World Bank, “Implementation completion report (24670) on a credit in the amount of $80 million to the Government of Ghana/ECG/VRA for a National electrification Project (credit 2467-GH),” 29 June 2001, 5.
↵121. World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report,” 4.
↵122. World Bank, “Project appraisal document,” 2.
↵123. R. Golumbeanu and D. Barnes, “Connection Charges and Electricity Access in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Policy Research Working Paper 6511, The World Bank, Africa Region, Sustainable Development Network (2013), 7.
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