The opportunities for investors to play a part in Africa’s social and economic development by providing more of its rapidly growing population with clean, reliable power are highlighted in a new Growth & Recovery video produced by Oxford Business Group in partnership with technical solutions provider JESA.
OBG’s Growth & Recovery videos are among the latest additions to the company’s suite of research tools, providing essential information on developments across key economic segments and their prospects for future growth, as the global economy moves towards recovery.
In the video, OBG’s narrator noted that Africa’s fast pace of growth had heightened the need to bridge the significant gaps in power provision across the continent.
“Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, with a population projected to more than double, from 1.1bn in 2019 to around 2.5bn by 2050. Today, more than half of the region’s population has no access to power,” he commented.
He also said that Africa was well placed to make renewables a key part of its future energy mix, boasting considerable potential across the solar, wind, hydro and geothermal segments. Focusing on sustainability, he added, would help the continent capitalise on its sources of renewable energy.
Hicham Kabbaj, JESA’s Managing Director, said rapid population growth and the ongoing urbanisation under way across much of Africa had heightened the need to make new power infrastructure there a priority.
“The potential for developing green sources of power generation in the region is huge, as the solar and wind projects already established in both cities and rural communities show,” he said. “Moves to boost the role of renewables in the energy mix will also help with broader efforts to make new growth both sustainable and equitable at a time when investors are keen to seek out projects that have given weight to ESG principles.”
Commenting ahead of the launch, Marc-André de Blois, OBG’s Director of PR and Video Content, agreed that while Africa faced several challenges in its efforts to develop the region’s power infrastructure, the potential rewards were considerable, as the Group’s Growth & Recovery video showed.
“Our broadcast highlights the positive developments under way in Morocco, which has already built major industry expertise following the country’s pledge to make more than half of its capacity renewable by 2030,” he said. “As well as highlighting the hurdles Africa faces in terms of infrastructures, we’ve been able to shine a spotlight on a renewable energy ecosystem that has succeeded in gaining the confidence of a wide range of stakeholders.”
