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Making Africa's Power Sector Sustainable - An Analysis of Power Sector Reforms in Africa
The biggest challenge facing sub-Saharan African countries today is to reach a sustainable rate of positive economic growth that will enable them to cope with soaring demographic and urban growth. In a bid to stimulate a genuine dynamic of development and to rise above the economic, social, political, and environmental crises that have beset the region more or less permanently since the late 1970s, the countries of the region together with the support of multilateral institutions introduced several sectoral reforms. Among these reforms are those related to the power sub-sector, which were, as analysed by energy experts, aimed at improving financial and technical efficiency of utilities, facilitating divestiture and guaranteeing future electricity supply in an open globalised energy market.
Electricity is needed both to industrialize and provide basic energy for the majority of the people living off the grid in rural areas. This situation needs major changes not only because of development demand but also for the region and its sub-regions is to be economically competitive with other developing regions of the world and is to realize its sustainable development goals – the subject of this study.
