On July 15-17, 2015, we had a pleasure to participate – for the first time as an exhibitor – in POWER-GEN Africa, a conference and exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa.
Our stand was quite small but smart as always and it aroused huge interest among both representatives of the Republic of South Africa and visitors from Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana and Angola.
The fair was accompanied by bilateral meetings with representatives of governments of different African countries. The meetings were attended by Director Jan Antończyk.
Africa manifests above-average dynamics of development and thus it becomes an interesting direction of investment. Currently, Africa is one of the most dynamically developing areas of the world. Africa currently has 147 GW of installed capacity, a level comparable to the capacity China installs in one or two years. Average per capita electricity consumption in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) is just 153 kWh/year. This is one-fourth of the consumption in India and just 6% of the global average. Nearly 600 million people in Africa lack access to electricity. Electricity blackouts occur on a daily basis in many African countries. Faced with this situation, people and enterprises often have to rely on expensive diesel power generation to meet their electricity needs, costing some African economies between 1% and 5% of GDP annually. To meet its growing demand Africa has an urgent need to raise the level of investment in its power sector. Analysis of a range of country and regional studies suggests the continent will need to add around 250 GW of capacity between now and 2030 to meet demand growth. This will require capacity additions to double to around 7 GW a year in the short-term and to quadruple by 2030.
Therefore, in order to increase the share of revenues not related to the Polish energy sector, we plan a significant expansion of our activities in Africa, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Our previous considerable experiences in Nigeria such as Omotosho I (335 MW), II (500 MW) and Bayelsa (500 MW); Soyo I (750 MW) in Angola and Khartoum (250 MW) in Sudan, constitute a solid basis for further expansion.
