Sustainable Development Through Energy Cooperation in Africa: a Comparative Analysis of Eastern and Southern African Power Pools

Abstract

Energy is one of the critical factors to achieve sustainable development. Africa's development vision, as contained in African Union Agenda 2063, requires, inter alia, the provision of affordable, durable, and reliable energy. However, unsymmetrical resource, capital, and technological endowments at the global and regional level call on countries to increasingly cooperate and integrate their energy systems. Fittingly, the African Union's First Ten Years Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) identifies regional energy cooperation through the implementing regional power pooling as a remedy to alleviate energy poverty and achieve socioeconomic development in the continent. Half a century after Africa embraces energy trade and two decades after instituting Regional Power Pools (RPPs), energy poverty remains to be a critical challenge undermining Africa's development. The study examined the roles of RPPs in fostering energy cooperation for socioeconomic development in Eastern and Southern Africa. In doing so, the study compares the state of energy cooperation by examining the implementation of power pooling in the two regions. The study targeted 100 leaders and senior experts from the regional power pools, regional economic communities, financial institutions, scholars, the African Union, and the United Nations. Qualitative data were analysed thematically, while quantitative data was analysed via descriptive and inferential analysis. Simple linear regression models were used to test the hypotheses. The study utilises the theory of liberal institutionalist theory of international relations to analyse the roles of regional power pools in addressing the cross-border challenge of energy security. From the findings, energy cooperation has been confirmed as the viable approach to energy security in Africa; in Eastern Africa, weak power pool arrangement has contributed significantly to the prevailing energy insecurity whereas strong regional power pool in Southern Africa contributes to energy security, thus depicting that strong regional power pool is a key predictor of energy security in the region; the study could not confirm that the challenges and opportunities are similar; and the existence of bilateral electricity trading arrangements does not necessarily undermine the development of regional energy trade. The study concludes that the institutionalised attempt to energy security in Africa can address most of Africa’s energy security challenges. However, Africa must embrace the role of these energy cooperation institutions by pursuing a deliberate policy to strengthen them so that its overall integration project, as stipulated in the African Union Agenda 2063, can be materialised.