UNECA advocates more investment in renewable energy for African countries

Vera Songwe, executive secretary at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), says lower energy price will bring more sustainable investments into the sector.

Songwe said this during a webinar on trends of energy prices in Africa organised by the ECA and African ministers of finance on Tuesday.

She said that the ECA intends to stabilise energy prices because Africa cannot effectively move forward if it does not have the right investments and price for energy.

She said the commission intends to adopt a system of energy pooling from all regions to bring down the price of energy in the continent.

“We, as economic commission for Africa, are of course pushing for more sustainable investments in energy, more renewable energy investments including gas and to just look at how we can bring down the overall price,” Songwe said

“Prices are an important element when we look around, and we see the impact of price particularly the one we are talking about today, energy, there is no way that Africa can build forward better if we do not one, invest in energy and two, have the right pricing for energy.

“Energy is one of the fundamentals in our overall livelihood basket and so looking at how we can bring down those costs or at least stabilise them. It is an important component in the conversation that we have at the macro level and even the micro-level with private sector businesses.

“Of course, one of the issues that we are talking about and looking at is energy pooling, and we have all these for the regional pools of energy and how we can use all of that, maybe, to look at bringing down the cost of energy on the continent.”

Anthony Mehlwana, an officer at the UNECA, during his presentation, said that investment in the energy sector is still “insufficient”.

He said since most African countries are still inclined to biofuel, it might be difficult for African countries to meet the sustainable development goal number seven (SDG 7).

Mehlwana suggested that countries must provide an enabling environment for “crowding-in private sector investments in electricity sector, introduce natural gas as a transitory fuel to replace coal and facilitate full deployment of renewables,” he said

“Countries should apply cost-reflective tariffs but also pay attention to efficient generation of electricity to lower cost, to strengthen the member state’ data pooling systems such as electricity-generating agencies and regulatory institutions to enable accurate analysis of the energy,

“Provide incentives and mechanisms to increase the share of renewable energy in the power systems, for example, feed-in-tariffs, auctions/bidding, self-generation, debt/equity and energy targets.”

He also said that African governments need a policy shift to attract investment in the energy sector and reduce the cost.

“It’s a question of policies. We want policies that will enable the private sector to invest in this technology in Africa. The more we invest in renewables, the more the cost is coming down. So there needs to be an enabling environment, African countries can come together to invest in renewable energy.”