It should be obvious to anyone in The Gambia that we are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to addressing the country’s energy needs. Power outages are becoming increasingly more frequent. Voltage fluctuation problems are so intense that some appliances such as refrigerators and TVs hardly function in many neighbourhoods. Electricity tariffs remain stubbornly high.
Many Gambians were hopeful when the government launched the energy sector strategy called The Gambia Electricity Sector Roadmap 2019-2025, which was prepared with World Bank support. This strategy set several important long-term and medium goals. Among the medium goals to be achieved by 2025, include improving electricity generation capacity, reducing user tariffs, and reducing transmission losses and achieve universal access by 2025. In this article, I will focus on the electricity generation capacity.
Before a country can achieve anything with regard to energy services, it must have the capacity. The relevant capacity in this case is energy generation capacity as measured in megawatts (MW). The Gambia’s electricity generation capacity is significantly less than 100MW. The Turkish company (Karpowership) that is selling electricity to the country from an anchored ship is providing 30MW. The country also has a purchase facility of 50MW with Senegal. Since the current government came to power in 2017, there has not been significant investment in generation capacity in the country. The country is still stuck with the main power plants in Brikama and Kotu, in addition to a handful of small diesel generators in Basse and Farafenni.
Here is another way to illustrate how far behind The Gambia in terms of electricity generation capacity. There is now international consensus that 1000kwh is the target needed for a country to have sufficient energy supply. In The Gambia today, our per capital annual electricity generation is less than 200kwh. This is less than half of that of Senegal, whose per capita electricity generation is approaching 500kwh. At our per capita income level, our per capital electricity generation level should be close to that of Senegal. In other words, The Gambia needs to more than double its generation capacity to produce electricity that is commensurate with our income level and energy needs.
What the country needs is the construction of new power plants that results in significant increase, not minor adjustments in generation capacity. This entails building power plants that can add significantly to the power generation and involve new and efficient generators. It is also important that the new power plant to be constructed should be from sources that can contribute to the baseload capacity. Given the frequent outages due to loadshedding and our existing low per capita generation, the country obviously lacks adequate capacity to meet minimum energy demand. It is noteworthy that there are future plans by the government to built solar power plants. Given our current minuscule generation capacity, the installation of solar power plants, which provides intermittent power supply, will provide no advantage and might even result in grid instability.
Without investments in generation capacity, it is practically impossible for the country to meet its energy needs. Buying energy from a floating ship is the opposite of ensuring long-term energy security. It could make sense to buy energy from a floating ship on a temporary basis while long-term solutions are devised. Unfortunately, the longevity of the contract with Karpowership suggests that the current Gambian leadership is far from strategic in their thinking.
Similarly, buying extra capacity from Senegal also does not count as energy investments. Senegal has an economy that is expanding, which means it will have increasing need for energy to satisfy the needs of its industries. It also has a growing population that is urbanizing. At some point, Senegal’s excess capacity that is being sold to The Gambia today would end up being needed at home.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. One can point to an actual situation where excess capacity that we have taken for granted from Senegal is no longer available. Recently, Senegal restricted its export of basalt to The Gambia because of its own increasing local demand in their construction sector. Almost no Gambian anticipated this restriction of basalt supply. This should not be interpreted as some anti-Gambian move by Senegal. Rather, the priority of any Senegalese government is their national interest, just as the priority of any capable Gambian leadership should be safeguarding our national interest.
Sadly, is appears that the power we currently get from Senegal may be in jeopardy even before they need it simply because our national utility company (NAWEC) is not managing its finances well. It is highly unlikely that Senegal would agree to increase the capacity of the electricity they supply to the country or even continue with the same capacity given that NAWEC has significantly fallen behind in payment of electricity it buys from that country. In his testimony to the National Assembly last month, the Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Mr. Nani Juwara indicated that the country is 3 months behind in its payments to Senegal on the electricity supply. So, Gambians should not be surprised if Senegal discontinues the supply of electricity in the near future.
The lack of investment in generation capacity has another significant cost. It is contributing to the poor sequencing of activities in the energy sector, particularly with regards to the expansion of electricity access in the country. The government is currently expanding electricity connections, particularly in rural areas.
The joy of those newly connected households will be short-lived. This is because being connected to the grid in The Gambia does not guarantee regular and adequate electricity supply, as any urban Gambian resident can attest. Without adequate generation capacity, these newly connected households will not only experience frequent blackouts but also significant voltage fluctuations.
It is important to emphasize that this is not mere speculations because it has already happened in other rural areas. When certain areas of URR were supplied with power purchased from Senegal, there was initial euphoria. However, as more households were connected, outages are now common and sometimes last for a whole day. Voltage fluctuations are so serious that it took several days for a freezer to produce ice during last year’s Ramadan.
To aggravate the above problem, the government is installing streetlights in rural areas that are connected to the grid. This is completely wrongheaded. Of course, the country needs streetlights everywhere. But with modern advances in solar energy, those streetlights should be solar-powered, rather than connected to the national electricity grid. The short-term cost difference between solar and grid is very small but the long-term cost difference strongly favors solar street light.
The case for solar streetlights over grid-connected ones is unambiguously stronger in the Gambian context. Given that most NAWEC customers have prepaid meters, street lights should remain one of the few major sources of unpaid bills. It is generally understood that the energy bills of streetlights are supposed to be paid by municipalities and local governments but the current expansion of grid-connected streetlights is not being done in coordination with any of the local governments.
One can contrast our wrongheaded streetlight decision with common sense approach in Senegal. Anyone driving from Keur Ayib to Dakar cannot fail to notice that every single settlement along that highway has street lights. Yet, despite the fact that Senegal has far greater electricity supply than the Gambia, all those rural streetlights are solar-powered. This is because the energy authorities in Senegal are aware of the obvious point that it makes a lot more financial sense to have solar-powered streetlights than installing grid-connected ones in such situations.
The government’s deviation from the energy sector is a microcosm of a larger problem. The development of documents such as the sector policies and strategies have devolved into largely pointless activities under the current regime. The creation of these documents in most cases are initially usually pushed and funded by development partners. However, once the requisite consultation and validation exercises are completed, the documents are shelved and forgotten. The reason that such patterns are repeated with depressing regularity is, first and foremost, a failure of leadership.
