One of the panels at the Russia-Africa Forum in St. Petersburg was entitled “Nuclear Technologies for Development of the African Region.” Africa is ripe for nuclear power. While Rosatom is involved in planning a nuclear facility in Egypt, presently the only working nuclear reactor in Africa is the Koeberg Reactor in South Africa. The issue clearly generated a lot of interest at the forum.
“Africa is on its way from being one-fifth of the world’s population to one-third,” said Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev. “At the same time, if you look at electricity generation globally, last year, approximately 30 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity was generated on the planet, while Africa generated less than 1. And in that sense, this disparity cannot be sustained for long. It is clear that states on the African continent will be actively engaged in building power-generation capacity in the coming decades,” he said.
Egypt’s Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy Mohamed Shakar El-Makarbi said that the development of nuclear energy in his country in cooperation with Rosatom has a positive impact on all spheres of life and work. “We expect the number of jobs to increase ninefold. In addition, the country’s development strategy until 2035 states that by that time renewable energy sources should account for about 42%—nuclear power can help us with this.”
“Right now, no more than 70% of our population has access to electricity,” said Rwanda Atomic Energy Board CEO Fidele Ndahayo. Nuclear energy can remedy this situation, he went on: “Nuclear power is about reliability. Nuclear power is not just about money. All studies show: It leads to economic growth in all spheres of life.”
