The African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) has rejected the privatisation-driven approach to solving Africa’s energy crisis, as the continent cannot achieve meaningful industrialisation without public control of electricity.
ITUC-Africa General Secretary, Comrade Akhator Joel Odigie, who spoke to journalist at a recent meeting of over 60 African climate-change experts, focal persons and specialists, said the World Bank and African Development Bank-backed Mission 300 initiative could not effectively address Africa’s energy poverty through privatised electricity.
Odigie said Africa should be able to point to at least one industrialised society that achieved industrialisation on the back of privately controlled electricity.
” They should point to one. There is none,” he said.
Mission 300 is aimed at expanding electricity access across Africa, where about 600 million people, according to Odigie, remain without access to electricity.
Using Nigeria as an example, Odigie said electricity privatisation had failed to guarantee reliable access, while rising tariffs were making power increasingly unaffordable.
• TRIBUNE
