Failing International Development Energy Security Policies in Africa: Example of the USAID African Infrastructure Program

Changing conceptions of the ethics underpinning energy security strategy demonstrate how Western policies, particularly that of the World Bank and USAID, are out of lock-step with the realities faced by the citizens of African nations. Barry Barton, Catherine Redgwell and Donald Zillman define the classic conception of energy security “as a condition in which a nation and all, or most, of its citizens and businesses have access to sufficient energy resources at reasonable prices for the foreseeable future free from serious risk of major disruption of service.”[1] This is a simple ‘supply-is-greater-than-or equal-to-demand’ scenario. However, an array of emerging justice claims, from the tenets of sustainable development law and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to shifting norms in climate change law and international development practice mean that energy security is taking on a new meaning around the globe, and especially in Africa.

Internationally, the world was awakened to the relative instability of the global energy market by the 1973 OPEC oil crisis.[2] Since then, the West’s focus has been on maintaining security of supply, and increasing overall capacity across the energy sector in a state-centred, top-down fashion. Matters such as energy efficiency have largely fallen by the wayside, as the decreasingly regulated energy marketplace is centred on the production and consumption – but not saving – of energy.

A state-centred focus on ‘sustainable development’ has started to pervade some facets of international law since the release of the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report. Bosselmann asserts that sustainable development “has become the concept which must guide both individual and collective action at every level and national and international policies.”[3] The Brundtland Commission Report states:

Sustainability requires the enforcement of wider responsibilities for the impacts of decisions. This requires changes in the legal and institutional frameworks that will enforce the common interest. Some necessary changes in the legal framework start from the proposition that an environment adequate for health and well-being is essential for all human beings including future generations. Such a view places the right to use public and private resources in its proper social context and provides a goal for more specific measures.[4]

USAID launched its African Infrastructure Program (AIP)[5] to try and assist large energy producers in launching renewable energy generation and transmission projects. The mandate of the AIP is to provide targeted financial advising in a project’s initial phases, helping to bring a project to financial close by offering “independent advice in a non-partisan spirit.” However, it can be argued that the AIP operates under a strong bias, as all generation projects under its portfolio must be no smaller than 20MW, and valued at no less than $50 million USD. They specifically do not deal with independent power producers (IPPs); rather they assist governments in dealing with and regulating IPPs. Of course there is a need for this, but it is interesting that this development strategy is not balanced out by providing analogous programs for citizens of the nations where USAID operates. For instance, the government may be able to manage IPPs but if there are no grassroots efforts at strengthening labour pools, increasing public understanding of energy efficiency matters, and helping communities develop their own energy strategies, then the renewables sector will not become truly competitive. It certainly will not decentralize energy production, which is a core goal of sustainable development energy policy.[6]

Bosselmann sees three key ethical challenges that confront modern energy policymakers: 1) a broadening of our ethical concerns for energy taking into account matters of social, environmental and future equity, 2) increasing concern for the well-being of all, not just human inhabitants of the planet, and 3) that the guidance of sustainable development is now seen as a must, not a mere consideration in policymaking.[7] Moving to the African context, Omorogbe highlights the social tensions behind the energy security situation on that continent quite aptly:

Within the context of Africa, it should be understood that norms emanating from sources other than those of the states play a major role in regulating the personal lives and day-to-day transactions of the ordinary citizen, as distinct from the roles of formal laws or customary law. Whilst the enacted laws of the state totally regulate all of criminal and administrative law, and a great proportion of contract, customary law features significantly in land law, inheritance, and succession. For day-to-day living and for processes that aid the smooth functioning of life’s activities, order and regulation emanate from other sources that have been created or evolved to fill the vacuum arising from the failure of states to fulfil basic functions of governance such as the administration of justice, revenue collection, the provision of utilities, and other measures to enhance the quality of life, and provide for the security of citizens. In many states the governments at all levels have failed to look after their citizens and play little or no part in their lives and development. The resulting vacuums in these countries have been filled by various community-based mechanisms that centre around the traditional extended family, ethnic, and community systems [emphasis added].[8]

This notion of energy security jives with other notions of security that have been previously discussed by this author on this blog. The state, and by extension the large power producers which are often state-owned in Africa, are only apt to decrease in importance over time, especially due to their poor collective track record at providing energy security in Africa.[9] Renewable energy technology allows the citizenry to make this transition to provide their own energy security at the local level, and will help African nations meet their overall social development goals at the same time, in addition to lowering CO₂ emissions.

The USAID AIP diverts the scarce amount of funding that exists for energy development projects to the very same actors who have been so reluctant to establish a more progressive brand of energy security in Africa. Why would Eskom for instance, the South Africa state-owned electric utility, be any better at providing renewable energy than it has been in producing conventional energy? By choosing to focus solely on state-centred renewable energy USAID seems to misinterpret the opportunity costs involved. As Richard Worthington points out:

Decentralisation of electricity generation offers a range of benefits, including system stability, reduced transmission losses and compatibility with renewable energy technologies and community-based projects, whereby communities are participants in accessing or producing energy, rather than simply clients. Democratising the energy sector, or just the provision of household energy services – i.e. increasing popular participation and public benefits – is a concept that is not well developed in mainstream planning. Failure to diversify our electricity industry [in South Africa] is increasingly recognized as a threat to energy security, but the increasing burden being transferred, as we seek to avoid political capital expenditure in the present, is not quantified.[10]

Many African nations believe strongly in the UNFCC and want the process to be strengthened. Any true implementation of the Kyoto Protocol must include a proliferation of grassroots renewable energy technologies, grid decentralization as described above, and the realization that communities need to begin to take control of their own energy destiny. USAID should not be in the business of helping save state-owned “strategic industries” from the realities of a changing energy security landscape. Rather, they should focus their efforts on micro-lending, technology transfer issues, and stirring up consumer demand for cleaner energy sources in Africa.

[2] Ibid at 7.

[3] Klaus Bosselmann, “Ethical Implications” in Bradbrook, Adrian; Lyster, Rosemary; Ottinger, Richard L & Xi, Wang (eds.). The Law of Energy of Sustainable Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) at 74.

[4] Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development, UN WCEDOR [Bruntland Commission] 1987, UN Doc. A/42/427, at para. 3 & 76.

[5] The PDF presentation linked above was presented by Alain Rosier at the Wind Power Africa Conference and Exhibition in Cape Town South Africa, 14 May 2010. For more information on the conference please visit: www.windenergyafrica.com. Disclosure, the author has been an adviser to the African Wind Energy Association, which hosted the conference, and chaired the panel in question.

[6] Ottinger writes about the roaring success seen in Denmark, where some 100,000 families own shares in wind turbine cooperatives. Richard L Ottinger, “Legal Frameworks for Energy for Sustainable Development” in Bradbrook, Adrian; Lyster, Rosemary; Ottinger, Richard L & Xi, Wang (eds.). The Law of Energy of Sustainable Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) at 103 at 106.

[7] Bosselmann, supra note 3 at 74.

[8] Yinka Omorogbe, “Alternative Regulation and Governance Reform in Resource-Rich Developing Countries of Africa” in Barton, Barry; Barrera-Hernández, Lila K.; Lucas & Alastair R. (eds.), Regulating Energy and Natural Resources (London: Oxford University Press, 2006) at 42.

[9] Abeeku Brew-Hammond & Francis Kemausuor. “Energy for all in Africa – to be or not to be?” (2009) 1 Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 83-88.

[10] Richard Worthington, “Cheap at half cost: Coal and electricity in South Africa” in David A. MacDonald (ed.) Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Power Grid (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2009) at 132. A free ‘e-copy’ of this book can be downloaded, online:  Human Sciences Research Council <http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2243>.

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