China has been highly successful in electrifying rural areas in the past half century. Institutional structure and its reform are important for investment and, therefore, development of rural electrification. Over time, there have been three major institutional changes initiated by the central government; When the People's Republic was founded in 1949, it was short of capital, technology and management professionals to promote rural electrification, so rural electricity had a separate administrative system from the urban areas. From 1949 to 1977, China established a comprehensive vertical system of rural electricity administration under strict central planning. At the end of the 1970s, with the adoption of economic reform policy, the central government handed over the management of the local electricity system to local government. County level has proved the most effective implementation unit for both planning and project implementation of the rural electricity system. From 1998 to 2002, the central government has been separating local electricity supply from local governments to facilitate the commercial operation of the utility market. After 2002, the rural electricity system was merged with the urban system, forming an integrated national electricity administrative system in China. Copyright Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2006.
This paper presents the status of the energy sector in Malawi which is not effectively contributing to the national economic development because it is unreliable and insufficient hence not able to meet the energy demand. About 83% of Malawi’s population live in rural areas and rely on fuel wood for energy supply. High reliance on biomass has had negative environmental impacts through indoor pollution, deforestation, soil erosion leading to high soil sediment loads to water bodies resulting in poor water quality in rivers and lakes. Electricity supply is much less than demand resulting in deficient and unreliable supply. Malawi is endowed with a number of renewable energy resources yet utilization of these resources is still a major challenge. Little progress has been made in improving the energy supply situation due to a number of reasons, main ones being poverty, lack of political will and wrong approaches in addressing the energy problem. Most current approaches aim at improving the current situation but our opinion would be to develop new strategies to shift the energy situation from its present condition to the desired status. The paper starts with an introduction, then status of the energy sector, then goes on to discuss energy development efforts according to sectors and finally gives a conclusion.
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