Politics
Obama’s Power Africa Initiative Showing Results but Draws Criticism
“I think that a big part of what’s happening is that companies like GE see a tremendous opportunity to sell oil and gas technology,” Sierra Club’s Gu told AFKInsider. “So yeah, I think there’s a bit of rhetoric saying that is all about powering poor citizens, but there is a lot of reality which is oil and gas companies seeing huge profit opportunity.”
Of course, GE is also involved with some Power Africa renewable energy projects, supplying 38 wind turbines to Kenya’s Kinangop wind power project, as well as providing training for local technicians and maintenance for 10 years. And the company is the major sponsor of the two-year, Off-Grid Challenge to bring power to remote areas in Kenya and Nigeria.
There are also questions about how the 12 different agencies involved will interact, how transparent and flexible the process will be, and even how much of the funds will actually leave the US. Raval at USAID says the 12 agencies “work as a team,” and they do that on a regular basis through power Africa working group meetings so they all are on the same page.
“This is not necessarily the first time we’re doing it, but it is certainly fairly new in terms of how the US government is funding overseas development projects and that is having part of the money come from the private sector and having more of the impetus upon them,” USAID’s Raval told AFKInsider. “And that helps them obviously in terms of American jobs, in terms of sustainability, and in terms of the fact that a lot of these companies have been in Africa on the Continent for many years.”
But the bigger question for Power Africa’s priorities still remains: Is running wires to expand the electric grid from village to village really the best way to go in a rapidly developing Africa? “What we see as part of Power Africa is it is essentially 20th century solutions to a 21st-century problem,” Gu told AFKInsider. “What we’re saying is that the world’s most sophisticated technologies are the best development tools for the poor. We’ve already seen that with mobile phones and there’s no reason that clean energy can’t and won’t have the same type of leapfrog impact.”
Copyright AFK Insider 2014
