Business News of Monday, 20 November 2017
Source: citibusinessnews.com
2017-11-20
Rwanda wants to increase electricity penetration to 100 percent in the next five years
As part of efforts to increase the country’s electricity penetration to 100 percent in the next five years, the Rwanda Energy Group(REG) has visited Ghana to learn from the Electricity Company of Ghana(ECG).
Even though Rwanda is known to have introduced many reforms including electronic registration of businesses, the country is still lacking with only 40 percent of electricity penetration, while Ghana is around 85 percent.
Speaking to Citi Business News after a tour of Ghana’s power sector, the Head of Energy Efficiency and Revenue Protection at Rwanda Energy Group, Nkubito Stanley stated that the country is determined to reach 100 penetration in the next five years.
“We want our population to access electricity by 100 percent in the next 5 years. The government has given us 7 years but we have set our own target that we want to achieve this by 2023,” he said.
“In other to be there it requires that some things must be done. We need to prepare a strategic plan that will take us there. We found out that we needed to do benchmarking and we realize ECG has done a lot that we can learn from,” he added.
Mr. Nkubito observed the ECG has undergone many changes that can be learned by REG to improve power generation and distribution.
He pointed out for example that the type of metering system used by the ECG is cost effective and efficient in revenue mobilization.
“We found out that apart from South Africa, Ghana has the highest electricity access so we decided to come and do our benchmarking with the ECG. We also realized the metering system is among the best on the continent,” he said.
Meanwhile, the General Manager in charge of Business Development at the ECG, Mr. Theo Asante-Darko stated that Ghana’s electricity penetration is the best in West Africa.
