EEI program provides Africa utility execs a platform for networking, learning from peers
Utility executives from the industrial world are reaching out to their counterparts in Africa to offer their insights, ideas, and connections to help them strengthen their leadership teams and improve their overall effectiveness and profitability.
Edison Electric Institute (EEI) earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) that will tie the two organizations together through EEI’s Africa Utility Power Sector Exchange (AUPSE).
The idea behind the AUPSE is fairly straightforward: it establishes it as a forum for high-level executives from African power companies to network and talk shop with their peers from the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world.
“Joining AUPSE is a great opportunity for GRIDCo to be part of an international network and share their insights and best practices on our key operational priorities,” GRIDCo CEO Jonathan Amoako-Baah said. “We are confident that our participation will be extremely beneficial to enhance our strategic planning.”
The AUPSE initiative was established by EEI with the assistance from the U.S. Department of State last year. It serves as an outreach to the line of managers who are keeping the lights on in Africa and extending power lines into crowded neighborhoods and remote villages, often on shoestring budgets with varying levels of regulatory support and investment. The goal is to support utility officials with input from executives in other countries who have years of experience managing major grids, improving their company’s operations, and working with global investors and financiers.
“It’s not a typical aid program,” Lawrence Jones, EEI vice president for International Programs, told Daily Energy Insider. “The purpose is not to do traditional capacity-building; it is an opportunity for African CEOs to engage with their counterparts.”
The program has held CEO-level gatherings in Washington, D.C. and at the African Utility Week conference in Cape Town, and plans two more such gatherings in Africa and Washington next year. Jones said the dialogues facilitated by the AUPSE are not at village level or even at the presidential palace, but rather they are aimed at the executive suite. There will be discussions and brainstorming on steps that can be taken to firm up the operational and financial side of African utilities, helping ensure that electrical service is not only expanded in Africa, but also maintained at an efficient and effective level for the foreseeable future.
Strengthening Africa’s ties to the rest of the world through the AUPSE will result in improved operations and will also create an awareness in Africa of current best practices and high-end professional education and development for up-and-coming utility executives whom the CEOs can rely on.
“Many of these CEOs studied in the U.S. and Europe,” said Jones. “These people know what they are doing and are pretty sophisticated, but they don’t have the bench. We are trying to help develop this managerial bench.”
Networking and the sharing of ideas and experiences are an important foundation for top utility executives. Professional organizations, such as EEI, are popular forums for education and relationship building, and AUPSE extends that capability into the African continent where levels of economic development, legal systems, and professional education can vary. Utilities are often branches of the government and can be susceptible to political winds and whims.
The World Bank issued a report on Africa’s electricity industry in 2016 that described the overall grid as grappling with issues including unreliable service, equally unreliable payments from customers, plus “external shocks” ranging from weather to currency valuations to fluctuating fuel costs.
“Improving operational efficiency should be the first area of policy focus in reducing quasi-fiscal deficits,” the report concluded. “If utilities could reduce combined transmission, distribution, and bill-collection losses down to 10 percent of dispatched electricity … and tackle overstaffing, an additional 11 countries could see their utility deficits disappear.”
The World Bank report noted some daunting challenges for African power companies that might seem foreign to western executives, but there are also plenty of issues that they have in common, such as cybersecurity, smart meters for consumers, managing rates, and tying renewable resources in remote locations into the national grid. And, since Africa’s technology is generally not replaced as often as it is by western utilities, the continent offers opportunities for “leapfrogging” that will give the west a chance to see newly installed systems in operation.
“They don’t have a lot of already built systems, so they can do deployment and testing easier,” said Jones. “They can try things in Africa that we can later adopt.”
Jones added: “We are not giving them directions on where to go. Our intent is not to be prescriptive, our intent is for them to own the design so it should be driven by their needs.”
