Africa’s bumpy road to wider use of sustainable energy
NAIROBI, Kenya: For years, Kenyans freely used and disposed of plastic bags. The bags were ubiquitous—in the markets, in the gutters and in the guts out of 3 out of every 10 animals taken to slaughter.
Nakuru, a town northwest of Nairobi, was a particular eyesore, with a poorly managed dump site that left bags strewn across the roads. It drove Nakuru resident James Wakibia to desperation and then to activism. Wakibia wrote letters to local papers, posted on social media, launched the hashtag # banplasticsKE and joined local group InTheStreetsofNakuru to petition the Kenyan government to ban single-use plastic bags. It got people talking. Finally, in August 2017, Kenya passed a landmark law banning the purchase, sale or use of plastic bags. Offenders risk four years in prison or a $ 40,000 fine.
“Plastic bags were virtually all over the place,” Wakibia told Africa Renewal. “But now the once- clogged drains are flowing and roadsides are free from plastic bags. There is a visible change.”
The trash and plastics nightmare can be found across the continent. Sub- Saharan Africa produces approximately 62 million tonnes of waste per year, including plastic waste, according to the World Bank. With Africa’s rapid urbanisation and economic growth, environmentalists expect that figure to double by 2025.
Yet Africa’s epidemic of waste may very well contain the seeds of a solution to another stubborn problem—the energy shortage.
In sub- Saharan Africa some 609 million people ( 6 out of 10) have no access to electricity, and about 80 per cent of those in rural areas lack electricity access, according to 2017 data by the World Bank. Manufacturers in sub- Saharan Africa experience an average of 56 days of shutdown time per year due to power outages, the African Development Bank noted in 2017.
To achieve universal energy access, Africa requires an investment of more than $ 1.5 trillion in the energy sector between 2018 and 2050. Without such an investment, subSaharan Africa will be home to an estimated 89 per cent of the world’s energy poor by 2030, according to a 2017 report by the International Energy Agency ( IEA), an organisation that advises governments on energy policy.
To meet demand, exploration is underway to convert the mounting piles of rubbish into much-needed energy— and some countries are already showing how that can be done.
This year Ethiopia completed the Reppie thermal plant, Africa’s first waste-to- energy plant, which has the capacity to incinerate 1,400 tons of waste per day. The plant handles 80 per cent of Addis Ababa’s waste and converts it into electricity that, when the plant becomes fully operational, will serve 3 million people— thus providing 30 per cent of the capital city’s needs.
To execute the US$ 120 million project, the Ethiopian government partnered with China National Electric Engineering Co., which worked with Cambridge Industries and its managing director Samuel Alemayehu, a Stanford- educated engineer and former Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
“The Reppie project is just one component of Ethiopia’s broader strategy to address pollution and embrace renewable energy across all sectors of the economy,” Zerubabel Getachew, Ethiopia’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, told UN Environment. “We hope that Reppie will serve as a model for other countries in the region and around the world.”
With only four per cent of the continent’s wastes being recycled, Africa’s waste management is still in its infancy, according to a 2018 report by UN Environment and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, a South Africa– based research organisation.
South Africa may be an outlier. PET Recycling Company, a South African recycling company, reported in 2016 that plastic bottle recycled tonnage has grown by 822 per cent in the country since 2005.
“Currently South Africa does not have mandatory punitive legislation in place which makes separation of recyclables (from the waste stream)… in homes, offices, restaurants and bars compulsory. Mandatory separation at the source will ensure greater recycling success in years to come,” said Shabeer Jhetam, executive director at the Glass Recycling Company.
Without legislative backing, Wakibia is sceptical about sustainable practices across Africa.
“I think the biggest hindrance to environmental protection is when politicians have vested interests,” he told UN Environment. “For example, many politicians are shareholders of companies engaged in lumbering, or are shareholders in companies dealing with plastics. So it becomes hard for them to support any initiatives calling for sustainable forestry or a ban on single-use plastics.”—