One of the surest ways for President-elect Donald Trump to create high-paying jobs in the United States is to support the electrification of Africa. American companies such as GE Power and Baker Hughes Company are work leaders in the manufacture of gas turbine power stations. The U.S. is home to world leaders in the engineering and equipment for gas production.
Some 600 million of Africa’s 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity. Only 1% of South Sudan’s population has access to electricity, despite the fact that it produces oil. Only 9% of the people in Democratic Republic of the Congo have electrical power. The figures for Chad are 9%; Central African Republic 3%; and Burkina Faso 14%. While the North African countries are fully electrified, the average for Sub-Saharan Africa is somewhere around 50%. No country has a surplus to spare, while South Africa, which has a rate of 94%, is constantly resorting to load shedding. High-growth Egypt, which has almost tripled its capacity in the last 15 years, has a hard time keeping up with demand.
Africa must be fully electrified within five years, while laying the basis for further expansion. Countries such as South Korea, the Russian Federation, Germany and the U.S. based their industrialization policy on full electrification. Unlike China, Japan and South Korea, Africa has all the natural and agricultural resources it needs to industrialize. It does not need to export Adidas sneakers and cheap sweatshirts. It will industrialize rapidly through the processing of its abundant resources. That requires power and transportation infrastructure. It also requires lifting the educational and cultural level in order to prepare the population for the high-skilled and high-paying jobs required for this task.
A first phase of electrification will be minimally aimed at assuring households’ full access to electricity, as well as powering schools, health facilities, and initial agricultural processing facilities. This first phase will be carried out by gas and coal. A very rough new capacity is between 25 and 50 GW.
