A new Africa energy world: a more positive power utilities outlook

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Africa released its power and utilities sector survey 2015 recently. The survey, which looked at the future of electricity in Africa, involved 51 senior power and utility sector participants from 15 countries on the continent - Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. According to the study, Africa faces a huge electricity demand challenge, and the existing infrastructure is insufficient to meet current requirements, or of the coming decades. Ageing or badly maintained infrastructure and this was an issue of high concern to 67 per cent of those interviewed. This is despite estimates made that the availability of generation by ten percentage points could add significantly to a country's GDP.