Addressing key energy challenges under one roof

IN OCTOBER 2019, Cape Town, South Africa will play host to Southern Africa’s leading business to business power and energy event, which will bring together senior decision makers from the IPP, PPP and national power communities across the region.

The entire installed generation capacity of Africa’s 48 Sub-Saharan countries is just 68 GW, no more than Spain’s. Up to one quarter of that capacity is unavailable because of ageing plants and poor maintenance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, just one person in five has access to electricity. If current trends continue, fewer than 40 percent of Sub-Saharan African countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050. Per capita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) averages only 124 kilowatt-hours a year and is falling. The rate of consumption is barely one percent of that in high income countries. If entirely allocated to household lighting, it would hardly be enough to power one light bulb per person for three hours a day.

The Southern Africa Power Summit will provide a platform to address these key challenges: Improving ageing power infrastructure, developing new power infrastructure, renewable power innovations, gas to power technologies, transmission and distribution solutions, more cost effective temporary power solutions and much more.

The summit is also quite different to a traditional conference or exhibition. There are no booths or exhibition halls. It focuses on delivering an extremely high quality, high-level gathering with some of the most senior executives in the power sector, in an intimate five-star environment. All the themes and topics of the summit are end user driven and are put together by a content committee which consists of a delegation and government relations team.