The story published in the New Vision on March 11, 2015 on “solar plane starts leg two of the epic flight” just raises questions and at the same time answers for Uganda’s energy sector access initiatives.
The United Nations secretary general hailed the venture and congratulated the pilots and his spokesman went ahead to say “With their daring and determination, we can all fly into a new and sustainable future”
The question now remains: will Uganda fly into an energy sustainable future with the rest of the world and consequently achieve the objective of UN Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4ALL)?
In Uganda more than 90% of the population does not have access to electricity, the biggest percentage being rural communities. A lot of efforts have been directed towards the Rural Electrification programme which is being implemented by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA).
The government of Uganda has overtime borrowed money for the Rural Electrification Programme a perfect example being the Energy for Rural Transformation Project (ERT) which is funded by the World Bank as a three-phase Adaptable Programme Loan (APL) valued at $135m.
The Programme Development Objective is to increase access to energy in rural areas. This project emphasizes registering successful implementation in the first phase of the Programme and the second phase (ERT II) is currently under implementation up to June 2016 with preparations commencing for the third phase of the Programme expected to be effective by August 2014 to 2019(5years).
Surprisingly despite the emphasis on registering success in the first phase of the ERT project REA failed to achieve its 10% target in ensuring electricity access to rural households.
REA acknowledges their failure and emphasizes that their Output Based Aid programme (OBA) is addressing challenges of affordability to ensure electricity access. Therefore there is need to appreciate that the failure of REA to achieve their targets will directly translate into the failure of Uganda to achieve an energy sustainable future
For Uganda to achieve a sustainable energy future there is need for such programmes to diversify and critically look at harnessing other renewable energy sources that are more appropriate for rural areas rather than concentrating on dam construction and connecting rural households on the national grid which has overtime proved un affordable.
A simple question REA should take into account in project initiation would be, how many rural households can be connected on clean energy sources like solar with the same $135m (UGX 351 billion) acquired from the World Bank for Energy for rural transformation project.
Barefoot Uganda, a solar provider offers solar panels supporting four bright lights for activities in four rooms ,two USB outputs on the controller allowing simple and easy charging of phones, radios and other devices plus an output and cig plug socket allowing the powering of 12V appliances costs $142.
This means that from this loan about 950,704 rural households in Uganda would have the chance to access decent, affordable and clean lighting energy solutions .It is therefore important for these projects to look back and evaluate the impact of their interventions and compare them with other alternative solutions.
By doing so Ugandans will gain access to diverse affordable sustainable energy sources and consequently achieve UN sustainable Energy for All Initiative which is “to make energy access to 500m people in developing countries a reality by 2030”
http://www.newvision.co.ug/mobile/Detail.aspx?NewsID=666365&CatID=4
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