Electricity, dams and technology choice in East Africa:

A window into political change

Christopher Gore

The Evolving African Energy Landscape

• Large, mega interventions versus small distributed, renewable generation

• Needs = experimentation and precedents

• Knowledge and research gaps : implementation, effects, and impact

Energy governance in Africa

Uganda: Reform and technology choice

• Reform ‘showcase’

• 2002: 4% national connection, 1% rural

• 2006: ‘We are in a crisis’

• 2014: 14% national, 7% rural

• Research puzzle:

• Why does energy sector conflict with this apparent legacy?

• What shaped the choices and implementation challenges?

Response: Re-regulate; Unbundle; Bujagali Dam; Private sector

Bujagali Falls

“Bujagali is instrumental to privatization…without [it] the whole restructuring of the sector will collapse” – Nordic Bilateral rep

“It’s a no brainer…show me the counterfactual”- WB country manager

‘When you find out why they did what they did please tell me’ – Kenya

Implementation

• Technical risks

• Private capital

• Reform sequencing

• Political and process risks

• Process: internally and externally defined

• ‘Process a circus…World Bank has to stop listening to nonsense…to those against development…Listen to people in 3rd World.’

• ‘Open war on them’

• Other generation alternatives delayed

• GTZ/GIZ; geothermal; microhydro

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Short-term legacy

• Government• “We followed the gospel and have moved

on…we are now the example of what not to do.”

• Learned by doing; new ‘development partners’

• Accept reform but not embrace: ERA

• World Bank• Pricing; independent producers• Hindsight – too ambitious; slower

• Civil society and opposition• Not anti-dam; sophisticated requests; use

processes in place; parliament/courts

• Bilaterals and multilaterals: New ‘natural’ division of responsibilities?

• Private sector: very sensitive to domestic conditions – political and financial

Moving forward: Politics of transition

• Electricity in Uganda =

• Conflict?• Low-carbon narratives• Technology choice

• Multiple transitions

• Process• “Indirect effects of a

problematic process can inflict penalties that are anything but nebulous” – Hirschman, 1967

• Process (cont’d)

• “Proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the cooking” – Privatization Secretariat, Uganda

• China and large dams: how long?

• South Africa

• Politics and governance

• The state and institutions matter

• Policy choice, implementation, success

• Rigorous comparison