Power Africa Supports Southern African Plan
Power Africa, the US initiative that is harnessing American private sector investment into energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa, has announced that it will support the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in developing its regional gas master plan.
Launched in July 2013 by then US president Barack Obama, Power Africa seeks to harness renewable and non-renewable energy sources, chiefly natural gas, to connect 60mn Africans to 30 GW of reliable electricity by 2030.
Andrew Herscowitz, the coordinator of the initiative said in a statement August 27: “Through the Natural Gas Roadmap for Southern Africa, Power Africa is now supporting the Southern African Development Community in developing the SADC regional gas master plan. The expanded integration of natural gas into southern Africa’s energy mix, as well as its industrial and petrochemicals sectors, was strongly endorsed at the 37th Summit of the SADC heads of state and government, which took place in South Africa in August last year.”
Herscowitz’s statement came 10 days after energy ministers from SADC’s 16 member states meeting at their summit in Namibia approved plans to develop the master plan that will guide the exploration and exploitation of the estimated 600 trillion ft³ of natural gas that exist in the region especially in Mozambique, Tanzania, Angola and Namibia.
At their 2017 summit in South Africa, SADC leaders agreed to establish a gas committee to promote the inclusion of natural gas into the regional energy mix and develop the master plan.
The chair of the SADC Council, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who is also Namibia’s minister for international relations and co-operation, told journalists at this year’s summit that the council of ministers has directed the SADC Secretariat to operationalise the committee and speed up work towards developing the inter-state gas utilisation strategy. She said member states should nominate members to sit on the committee.
SADC’s shift to natural gas has therefore received a boost from Power Africa, who, at the World Gas Conference in June, launched the Natural Gas Roadmap for Southern Africa whereby US companies plan to invest in $175bn in gas-to-power projects to add 16 GW of gas-fired generation in the region by 2030, which represents over 50% of the initiative’s top line goal.
Herscowitz said Power Africa has achieved financial close on 117 projects with capacity totalling 9.529 GW since 2015.