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Africa could grow more rapidly on the back of its great potential for industrialisation if it could fix its power deficits over the next few years.

Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister for Trade and Industry, said this at the third Brazil-Africa Forum in Recife, Brazil. 

The Trade and Industry Minister was speaking on the topic ‘Africa’s Industrialisation Potential in an Energy Deficit Context’ at the two-day forum on the theme ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Energy Supply in Brazil and Africa.’

The conference brought together some 200 leading African and Brazilian policymakers, energy sector regulators and producers, financial institutions, academics and researchers, and consultants. 

In his remarks to the forum, Dr Spio-Garbrah cited the vast energy resources of Africa, from oil and gas to solar, coal, wind, biomass and even sea waves. 

He noted that a country such as Ghana began its post-independence economic development with a full awareness of its energy needs and built a 500MW hydroelectric power generator at a time the country needed only 50MW of power. 

The feasibility of the hydroelectric project at Akosombo, the Minister said, was, however, directly linked with industry, as its major off-taker was an aluminium smelting plant, the Volta Aluminium Company, VALCO. 

As a result of the construction of this single power generator on the Volta River, the first government of Ghana was able to build more than 300 industries that converted most of Ghana’s raw materials to semi-finished and finished products. 

Among the transformational industries Ghana has established over the years were cocoa to chocolates, cotton to garments, cane to sugar, silica to glass, wood to furniture, animal herds to leather products, gold to jewellery, and the canning of fish, fruits and vegetables. 

The Trade and Industry Minister recounted how over the years the connection between power and industry has been lost and, as Africa’s populations have grown, power has become appreciated as mainly for residential and commercial use, with the potential for industry to be the off-taker of power being relegated to the background. 

Dr Spio-Garbrah noted that, nevertheless, most African countries, including Ghana, recognise the urgent need to revitalise and reinvest in their power and energy sectors, adding that much public and private investment is going into all aspects of these sectors, from generation to transmission and distribution. Ghana, he said, has today some 2,800MW of installed generation capacity, although for technical, maintenance and operating reasons, often less than 2,000MW was actually available for consumption. 

The Trade and Industry Minister recounted some of the power projects in the pipeline in Ghana and the fact that industries are increasingly building various power generation and heat recovery systems into their production plants, so as to be less dependent on the national grid. 

He cited the ongoing construction of a government-owned sugar processing plant in Komenda, Ghana, alongside other planned private sugar projects, most of which are also planned to produce ethanol. He invited Brazilian experts to assist Ghana in ensuring the effective management of this new industry. 

Dr Spio-Garbrah emphasised that for power to assist Africa to industrialise, there needed to be the development of the right policies, the harmonisation of regulations, and efficiency in the operational management of both power plants and industries. 

In addition, both sectors needed creative financing, considerable infrastructure support, as well as the selection of the right technologies and technical standards. 

On the sidelines of the Recife forum, the Trade and Industry Minister visited a sugar processing factory some two hours away, in order to gain some practical understanding of the operations of such plants. 

This, he said, was in preparation for the effective management and oversight of the Komenda sugar project, which is expected to be completed by mid-2016. The factory visited by the Minister is owned by the Petribu family, who have been producing sugar for more than 300 years. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of sugar.  
Earlier, at the African Global Forum in Dubai, the Trade and Industry Minister had informed some 500 leading Mid-East businessmen and government officials that what Africa needed most was the capacity to transform its raw materials into semi-finished and finished products, so it could curtail the exports of raw commodities, which had been its bane for centuries.