APPLY WITHIN Provision of clean energy in Africa faces short circuit
There’s high demand but a shortage of trained workers
● In Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 600-million people still lack access to electricity, off-grid renewable power is seen as one of the fastest ways to get energy to where it’s needed, particularly to remote and rural areas where many Africans live.
But one big challenge stands in the way, experts say: Too few trained workers able to plan, install and maintain solar, wind and other clean energy systems.
In power-hungry Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, “we’ve had very significant challenges finding very capable talent, particularly at the senior management level”, said Kweku Yankson, head of human resources in Africa for BBOXX, a clean energy company working to expand off-grid systems in 12 countries from Rwanda to Pakistan.
Rwanda, in turn, has what Yankson described as a big pool of job-ready young talent — but still relatively few people trained in clean energy technology.
Overall, only 16,000 people are recorded as working in renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, outside SA, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).
That is just 0.1% of the global renewable energy workforce, and fewer than the number of people who work on wind power in the US state of Illinois alone, Irena noted.
But with demand growing for renewable energy entrepreneurs and for workers in product assembly, sales, marketing, finance and intellectual property, efforts are now under way to provide the talent needed.
A Powering Jobs campaign, launched in October at an international off-grid renewable energy conference in Singapore, aims to train up to a million people globally by 2025 to meet demand for workers. The effort, led by Power for All — an organisation that promotes more use of decentralised power — and backed by the Schneider Electric Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, will focus on building skills in countries where electricity access is very low, said Gilles Vermot Desroches, director of sustainable development at Schneider.
The push is part of a broader global campaign to fill an expected 4.5-million jobs related to the expansion of off-grid renewable
We’ve had challenges finding talent, particularly in senior management Kweku Yankson Head of human resources in Africa for BBOXX
energy by 2030, according to Irena estimates. That expansion is focused in part on achieving a global sustainable-development goal of providing universal access to affordable modern energy by 2030.
In Africa, lessons are being drawn from India, which has trained more than 30,000 solar electric installers in the past two years. India aims to train a total of 50,000 installers by 2022, according to the government.
One of the biggest problems facing the expansion of renewable off-grid power in Africa is that systems need to be built and run in remote locations, where it can be hard to attract and retain staff, said Yankson.
Also, even in countries such as Rwanda, “the challenge has been around finding capable and experienced managing directors and senior finance managers”, he said.
In Kenya, Yankson said, the difficulty is cost: skilled talent comes at high salaries, thanks to competition for the best people in Nairobi in companies and nonprofit groups. To provide a broader pool of potential hires, BBOXX has created an online learning platform that offers professional courses, said Emery Nzirabatinya, a former learning and development manager at the firm. BBOXX also has started a future leaders programme in Kigali, he said.
“The programme seeks strong university graduates who are put through a rigorous, year-long development and exposure programme at BBOXX,” Nzirabatinya said.
Julienne Ayinkamiye, a recent civil engineering graduate from the University of Rwanda College of Science and Technology, is one of two inaugural participants in the leadership project in Kigali.
She is responsible for running a BBOXX pilot solar lighting project being launched this year in Rwanda and then across Africa.
“I am now working on real projects impacting the lives of thousands of rural households across Africa,” she said.