Africa’s energy poverty: Grid expansion, stronger financing, balancing renewable ambitions with gas solution for Nigeria

For years Nigerians have been grappling with a shortage of cooking fuels and electricity. To date, many lack access to clean fuels and a section of those with access cannot afford it.

Firewood and other dirty fuels cause great damage to human health and the environment and people living in the rural areas suffer the most.

With increasing deforestation, people in rural communities who depend more on fuelwood, travel further into the forest to gather enough that will last them for a period.

Most rural families and some in the urban areas have stopped using kerosene because they can no longer afford it, since the government stopped subsidising it. A litre of kerosene, popularly called the poorman’s fuel, now costs N1,169.67 ($1.51) as of June 12, 2023. 

In urban areas, the situation isn’t easier. Most families use gas, but complain of the high cost. A 5 kilogram cylinder of gas costs N4,200 in Lagos; refilling a 12.5kg, popular in homes, cost N10,253.39 in February 2023 and N10,262.56 in March 2023. Zamfara State in northwest Nigeria reported N11,000 for a 12.5kg cylinder.

On June 18, news broke that the federal government is set to increase electricity tariff by over 40 per cent from July 1, 2023. The development will further aggravate the financial crisis of families that are yet to come to terms with the high cost of petrol since the federal government stopped subsidising it on May 29, 2023.

Most homes in the country depend on petrol to power their electricity generating sets. More families may now turn to fuel wood, kerosene and coal-fired stoves as costs soar.

Electricity generated by Nigeria is still very low. As of June 18, 2023, the total electricity in the national grid, generated by the seven electricity plants stood at 3,057.7 megawatts. It fluctuated between 3,000MW and 5,000MW daily, though the federal government, led by former president Muhammadu Buhari, promised to generate 10,000MW within his first term in 2015.

With clean fuel out of bounds or inadequate, the rural population and urban poor have to resort to unhealthy alternatives. Some 95,300 people, mainly women, die annually in Nigeria from wood smoke, the World Health Organization stated in 2021. Women are disproportionately affected because they do tthe cooking in most households. 

WHO identifies wood smoke as the third biggest cause of deaths in the country after malaria and HIV / Aids.

The dependence on fuelwood also lead to deforestation and desertification.

Precious Onuvae, secretary, Nigeria Alliance for Clean Cooking, a public private partnership, said:

Most often, they get firewood from their farmlands and sometimes buy the firewood, and this has resulted in cutting down of trees in most farmlands. Those who use charcoal also cut a lot of trees and burn them to get charcoal and this has been a major issue in Nigeria.

Also, about 70-73 per cent of Nigerians are cooking inefficiently, meaning they use too much firewood and charcoal, and spend “not less than four hours collecting fuelwood two to three times a week, she added. 

Using clean cooking technologies such as ethanol / methanol cook stoves, efficient firewood cook stoves and efficient charcoal cook stoves, as well as LPG, electricity and biogas will reduce cost and rate of deforestation. 

Only about 40 per cent houses in Nigeria have access to grid electricity, according to technical director, International Centre for Energy, Environment & Development (ICEED), Okechukwu Ugwu. “Even where there is grid supply, the availability is very low.”

Lack of clean energy also eats into the food budget of Nigerians, he added. “Households spend about 50 per cent of their food budget on firewood and charcoal. So, there is health impact, economic impact and environmental impact through deforestation.”

Electricity in Nigeria is grossly inadequate, he said, “The demand, particularly for urban supply is over 12,000MW and the national grid is only able to supply between 3,000MW and 4,000MW in the past decades.”

He said the challenge of poor electricity supply is finance, adding that it requires very massive investment and which the government alone cannot provide. “It was interesting when the federal government, in May this year, signed a Constitutional amendment to discentralise the generation and distribution of electricity, giving the States an opportunity to do so.”

There is the renewable energy and energy efficiency policy of 2015 that is being implemented by the federal ministry of power, he said. “But the main challenge is that it is more expensive than grid electricity. ICEED visited some mini-grid sites that were developed by the Rural Electrification Agency and the cost per kilowatt hour was double the cost of the national grid. But renewable energy has other advantages like no emissions and long-term cost savings. The initial cost of investment is quite high, making it unattractive.”

Nigeria, he said, has potentials for harnessing renewable energy, particularly solar because of the abundant sunshine. “We also have enough waterways that can have small hydro power systems. These are sources waiting to be harnessed. We have small wind farms in the Northern part of Nigeria, but not yet sustainable.”

Nigerian lawyer Ifeoma Malo who works on energy said the mini grids being built by the federal government through the Rural Electrification Agency is a good development, stating that it would help. “This is being done with funds from the World Bank and the African Development Bank, and this loan created long-term capital in Nigeria that encouraged mini grid developers to work in the rural areas rather than focus on urban and some peri urban areas,” she said.

Olu A Verheijen, special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Energy, wrote a memo in 2022, as the managing director, Latimer Energy and an Advisor for the Energy for Growth Hub, stating, “By 2050, Nigeria will become the world’s third most populous country. Its population will roughly double to 400 million people – 75 per cent of whom will live in cities. This rapid urban growth will mean unprecedented electricity demand for end uses in industry, buildings, and transport."

Yet, at less than 200kWh per year, the average Nigerian currently uses less electricity than an American uses just to power their refrigerator, she aded. "This level of consumption is insufficient to power the economic development required to improve productivity and create jobs for the millions of Nigerians joining the workforce every year. Given that the vast majority of Nigerians will live in cities, it makes sense to prioritise meeting urban energy needs.”

She recommended an expansion of the electricity grid; strengthening utilities financially to enable them perform better; balance utility renewable ambitions with gas.

Utilising Nigeria’s relatively cheap and abundant natural gas reserves will remain an important component of the country’s energy transition, she added. As its share of renewables grows, natural gas will play an increasingly important role in ensuring electricity reliability until energy storage technology becomes cost-competitive at scale.

Investment in the existing grid will also pay off on climate goals, as zero-carbon technologies need a functional and robustly interconnected grid to reach progressively higher penetrations, she noted. “Expanding grid infrastructure is critical to Nigeria’s ability to transition to low-carbon electricity generation as cleaner technologies become competitive enough to slow the growth of gas-fired generation.”

Part of this article appeared in the cover story of the July 1-15, 2023 print edition of Down To Earth under the headline ‘Time Africa Switched’.

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