Interview: Africa's future energy security hinges on renewable energy: expert

Africa's future energy security hinges on the development of renewable energy, experts have said.

According to the experts, lighting up off-grid communities in Africa, mostly in rural areas, will need investments in renewable energy sector as experiences in Nigeria and parts of Eastern Africa have shown.

"Africa has been referred to as the last frontier because we are more or less lagging behind in terms of development, both socio-economic and infrastructural," Ifeanyi Orajaka, Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria-based Green Village Electricity (GVE) Projects Ltd, told Xinhua in a recent interview in Accra.

He said since both the economic and financial costs of extending grid power to off-grid rural communities were rising, the better option is renewable energy.

He added that renewable technologies available at the moment had been tested over the years and had proven to be viable.

Orajaka, an engineer in the renewable energy industry, said there had been significant reductions in renewable energy costs as opposed to what it used to be a decade ago.

"This has made it cost effective for even poor rural dwellers to use renewable energy," he told Xinhua.

He recommended that African countries should use renewable energy resources as much as possible, particularly in areas that were not yet connected to the grid in order to pare the cost associated with grid expansion.

"The saved up money could be invested in bigger power plants that would help industries to grow," he urged.

Even in urban areas, he added, renewable energy technologies, especially rooftop solar panels and bio-technologies, can be used to reduce cities' dependence on the grid.

Africa has over 600 million people without electricity but Orajaka believes that renewable energy resources, especially solar energy, could be a solution to the problem.

"From my experiences in Nigeria and also what's happening in East Africa, to ensure energy access to all Africans or to the over 600 million Africans that currently do not have access to electricity, renewable energy is the only way to choose," he stressed.

Prof. Howard Alper, a renowned Canadian Chemist and member of the international advisory board of Smart Villages, an initiative to provide renewable energy to off-grid communities around the world, urged African governments to develop renewable energy projects for the rural communities.

"The key issue is to get cohesion in policy and agreement with different groups sensitive to the local population; engaging with the communities and working at the community in a very measured way," Prof. Alper said.

He was optimistic that if nations seized the opportunity to develop renewable energy, starting at the village level, it would grow to benefit the continent as a whole. Endit