Policy guidelines for accelerating the energy transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: lessons from the mobile telecoms sector

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa faces immense challenges in its bid to attract capital to develop its energy resources and grow its economy. Relative to the pace of market penetration of cell phone services in the recent past, the growth in the share of the population with access to electricity has been rather dismal. The comparisons between both sectors are not new and have been made repeatedly over the years. This commentary recognizes that there are substantial differences between both sectors that make direct comparisons and a transfer of policy lessons difficult. It then identifies some key enablers of cellular telephony growth in Africa that can be applied to the electric power sector and refashions them into broad policy guidelines for boosting the pace of the energy transition on the subcontinent.