Facilitating greater energy access in rural and remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa: Small hydropower

Abstract

Flowing water has hydraulic energy that can be transformed into electrical energy, sub-Saharan Africa has an abundance of hydro resources that are untapped. In this study, various barriers limiting the use of small hydropower to tap the abundant hydro potentials for power generation are discussed. These barriers include insufficient fund; lack of adequate manufacturing infrastructure; lack of adequate power generation and distribution policies; inaccurate hydrological data; insufficient human and power infrastructure capacities; and inadequate domestic and regional participation in design and manufacture of small hydropower component devices and systems. This study sees hydro as a cleaner energy source and small hydropower as the best power system for rural and remote areas and for stand-alone electrification. For power sustainability in the region, public–private partnership, domestication of small hydropower technologies and less reliance on foreign technologies and international support are key factors.

Hydropower dependency and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa: A nexus framework and evidence-based review

“…Another significant aspect concerns the small-scale hydropower potential and its role for delivering electricity access to remote communities. Several technical assessments have been carried out for SSA (Korkovelos et al, 2018;Ebhota & Inambao, 2017;Kaunda et al, 2012), highlighting the significant potential (e.g., 9.9 GW in the Southern African Power Pool, and 5.7, 5.6, and 3.9 GW in the Central, Eastern, and Western African Power Pools, respectively). Leastcost techno-economic electrification models then show (Mentis et al, 2017b,a;Korkovelos et al, 2019) that these technologies can be the cheapest option to provide power to mini-grids in a number of settlements throughout SSA.…”

Energy and Population in Sub-Saharan Africa: Energy for Four Billion?

“…Based on historical trends in the region, there will be very limited nuclear power in SSA. Some have suggested that the best short-term option for the region may be to develop small hydropower policies in order to exploit as much of the region's hydropower potential as possible [80], but this cannot be a long-term solution as it has estimated that the maximum SSA hydropower potential is 16.3 EJ, and our scenarios show that hydropower can only meet a small percentage of projected energy demand (Figure 4).…”

Realization of PPP projects in the sector of energetics as a condition of a sustainable development of macroregions

“…The problem of energy supply and access is particularly acute for developing countries (Agarchand N., Laishram B. 2017;Chotia, V., Rao, N. V. M. 2018;Ebhota, W. S., Inambao, F. L. 2017;Kwame A. 2011;Luo, Z., Yang, K., Cen, K., He, J., Han, T. 2018;Ogundari, I. O., Otuyemi, F. A.…”

“…A serious problem of many macro regions is an existing gap in availability of electric power between urban and rural areas which is typical for almost 87% of world's population. In recent times developed countries face this problem as well, during introduction of alternative energy projects, which also supposes large investments which could be raised by combining state's sources of funding and private equity (Merkel А.1997;Daniel, Z., Craig, D., Schaich, L., Morgan, S. 2019;Ebhota, W. S., Inambao, F. L. 2017). Therefore, the main efforts in the future should be aimed at improving the efficiency of energy supply and consumption, the use of less polluting fuels, as well as the search for and pooling of sources of financing in these areas.…”