Energy Consumption in Africa

*This picture shows the World's consumption of energy compared to that of Africa.

"In comparison with other regions such as Latin America, Middle East, Europe and North America, Africa has one of the lowest per capita consumption rates. Modern energy consumption in Africa is very low and heavily reliant on traditional biomass. Between 1995 and 2001, Africa was consuming only 13% of the world's average energy consumption."

 

(www.un.org)

Africa has less than three times the world average, seven times less than Europe and fifteen times less than America!

Analysts argue that energy consumption that low should not be a prevalent and pressing issue in politics. They argue that African policy makes should be more concerned by the continued, "underconsumption" of modern energy. But as we know from doing readings from Africa and some mild research, African policy makers come from slim pickings and usually don't last long. So if they are not concerned with it, what happens?

  Reports have shown that in heavily populated areas such as South Africa, energy consumption has spiked in the past couple years, resembling that of consumption in areas like Latin America. This causes great concern because Africa is not equipped yet to be consuming that much energy. Their technology isn't as advanced and could cause detrimental damage to the environment and the people in Africa. 

In Africa, like the rest of the world, economic development, basic living standards and survival

depend greatly on access to energy. Most Africans however, have insuffici

ent access to energy, if

at all! There are a lot of companies and corporations that are doing research and helping out Africa

with their energy crisis, one of which being Association for the Development of Energy in Africa.

Otherwise known as the ADEA. Some of their biggest concerns include:

• improvement of the traditional usage of biomass
• promotion of natural gas consumption
• facilitating access to electricity in rural environments
• establishing technical, legal and fiscal conditions that facilitate oil and gas productions
• providing the means to enable maintenance of refinery facilities
• searching for solutions that enable producers and distributors to effectively deal with 
• the uncontrollable fuel price fluctuations. 
  

*This is a picture of which countries have prominent oil refineries.