TheCable

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, has underscored the power problem in Africa by revealing that in his home state of Kano, 20 million people share 35 megawatts of electricity.

Speaking at the Africa CEO forum in Abidjan, the president of Dangote group revealed of the decisions that has made his conglomerate so successful.

“Where I come from, which is Kano in Nigeria, we have over 20 million people and we are sharing 35 megawatts only,” Dangote said.

“So when we started business as a group, we said that we would not go into the national grid. Every single country that we are operating in, we would create, generate our own power and that is why we have been very, very successful.”

Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, also lamented Africa’s power situation and proffered solutions on the way forward.

“If you walk in the dark, you’ll stumble and you will fall. But if you walk in the light, you will constantly see thing ahead of you,” he said.

“The problem is, in Africa, you have today 645 million people without electricity. You have the GDP in which the cost of not having electricity is about four to five percent shaved off.

“We cannot be competitive when it comes to value adding. We cannot industrialise because we have no electricity. The kids cannot go to school because we have no electricity.

“Vaccines can’t be in hospitals because we have no electricity, and business are operating at very high cost, using diesel. In other words, what is the emergency power supply system has become the normal power supply system – no way!

“And as Africa Development Bank, I know that the very blood of Africa’s transmission and life is what we do.”

Nigeria currently generates a little above 4,000MW of electricity on the average, with President Muhammadu Buhari saying on Monday that his team would raise that to 10,000MW by 2019.