Energy Will Be A Hot Topic At The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

This is the third of a four-part series exploring U.S. President Barack Obama’s upcoming U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Aug. 4-6 in Washington, D.C.  Part three shows how energy is a big issue at the summit. Part two looks at side events associated with the summit; Part one illustrates the issues and events surrounding the summit; and Part four asks whether the summit is a risky undertaking for the White House.

The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Aug. 4-6 in Washington will focus on trade and investment by giving 45 heads of state and more than 100 Ministers an opportunity to mix it up with CEOs from the top U.S. corporations.

And one thing is clear: energy – a topic that has been on the minds of African leaders since President Obama announced his Power Africa initiate a year ago – will be an issue on the table at many meetings. After all, only about a quarter of sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity and 10 percent per year capacity growth is needed to meet electricity demand, according to the World Bank.

In fact, the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit has African energy ministers lining up to be on various panels that are both part of the summit, as well as those conducted outside the official event.

Many of those ministers are from the Power Africa countries — the “clean energy” target countries of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia and Nigeria — and Uganda and Mozambique, which have separate deals for “responsible” oil and gas development through the State Department’s Governance and Capacity Initiative.

“The planned agenda was designed from the start to engage African energy ministers as well as private investors, both of which groups are crucial in the growth of the African power sector,” said Charles Stadtlander, a spokesman at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in an AFKInsider interview.

Before the official summit opens, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy will co-host the “African Leaders’ Visit: Energy” trip to Houston July 30-Aug. 1 for oil and gas ministers from Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique — countries that have recent offshore natural gas discoveries.

As of this writing, the confirmed delegates include Esperança Bias, Mozambique’s Minister of Natural Resources.

“And she will be bringing with her two CEOs of the natural gas public resource sector,” said Thomas Hardy, director of public affairs at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, AFKInsider.

Also confirmed is Sospeter Muhongo, Tanzania’s Minister of Energy and Minerals, and Richard Sezibera, Secretary General of the East Africa Community which includes Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

Simultaneously on July 30, the Corporate Council on Africa’s Power Africa Working Group – the designated private sector facilitator for the U.S. Power Africa initiative – will present “Navigating the Power Sector in Ethiopia” in Houston. Confirmed are Ato Alemayehu Tegenu, Ethiopia’s Minister of Water and Energy and Azeb Asnake, the CEO of Ethiopian Electric Power.

“The Ethiopians are sending a very large delegation to Houston and that’s beyond the normal numbers that [U.S. Trade and Development Agency] does,” Stephen Hayes, president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa told AFKInsider.

Later in Washington on Aug 1, the Corporate Council will offer“Navigating the Power Sector in Ghana & Liberia,”that includes Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Ghana’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum, and Patrick Sendolo, Liberia’s Minister of Lands, Mines & Energy, as well as three executives from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, who will discuss the opportunities in their upcoming compacts.

Meanwhile, Ghana President John Dramani Mahama will be attending the White House Summit with energy on his mind: The country, which continues to face formidable energy generation challenges, is waiting on a decision concerning their second Millennium Challenge Corporation grant worth almost $500 million for projects in the energy sector, according to the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

The Corporate Council will also bring its member companies and others together with the African leaders in Washington on Monday, August 4 for an all-day Business Forum that includes a Power Africa luncheon and panel.

As Corporate Council on Africa’s Steven Hayes mentioned in Part Two of this series:“We established the Power Africa lunch and the U.S. government approached us and said ‘can we share in this and make this our official U.S. government event as well,’ and we said ‘sure.’”

“So we worked it out and the U.S. government keynote speaker is going to be Elizabeth Littlefield of Overseas Private Investment Corporation, who are probably doing more on Power Africa in terms of financing than anybody,” Hayes told AFKInsider, noting that the lunch panel originally was going to be “Power Africa: One Year After.”

“But we felt it’s far too early to give any type of assessment – positive or negative,” says Hayes.

Instead, the panel will touch on what has worked and what needs to be done with Power Africa.

“And so the U.S. government agreed to make that their primary agenda. So I think it’s going to be an exciting program,” Hayes told AFKInsider.

Meanwhile, Tuesday, Aug. 5, brings the main event for the U.S.-African Leaders Summit: the all-day U.S.-Africa Business Forum where it is expected that some 300 U.S. officials, CEOs and African representatives will mingle and talk shop.

A U.S. State Department official told AFKInsider that “Power Africa will be covered” during that Business Forum.

The Power Africa Road Tour

Leading up to the August summit, the U.S. government has been aggressively promoting energy development for months through trips to Africa by the who’s who of Power Africa’s lead government funding agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, U.S. Export-Import Bank, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Department of Commerce and the U.S. African Development Foundation.

During those road trips, the funding agencies let it be known there are more grants – and American energy companies – readily available for even countries not part of Power Africa.

“We are committed to supporting power projects across Sub-Saharan Africa,” Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s Charles Stadtlander told AFKInsider. “We currently have power projects or approvals for financing in Togo, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania. Our upcoming pipeline of deals adds even more countries to that list.”

At May’s World Economic Forum on Africa in Nigeria, the second round of grants were announced for the “GE Power Africa Off-Grid Challenge,” sponsored by the U.S. African Development Foundation, GE Africa and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – this year offering even more grant money.

“The one thing that has changed is that USAID has come on board this program allowing us to not just double the grants but to triple them… reaching all the countries involved in Power Africa,” Patricia Obozuwa, Director of Corporate Communications for GE Africa told AFKInsider.

Later in May, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker led 20 American companies on an “Energy Business Development trade mission to West Africa,” which visited Ghana and Nigeria to “promote U.S. exports to Africa by helping U.S. companies’ launch or increase their business in the energy sector in West Africa,” according to the Commerce Department.

Next up was U.S. Agency for International Developmen Administrator Rajiv Shah, who traveled to Ethiopia June 3-4 to meet with local government officials to discuss support for sustainable energy during the U.S.-Africa Energy Ministerial,co-hosted by Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Alemayehu Tegunu. It was during that trip Secretary Moniz announced the new “Power Africa Beyond the Grid” initiative to leverage partnerships with 27 companies committing to invest over $1 billion into off-grid projects as a supplement the existing “Power Africa Off-Grid Challenge.”

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency was also making the rounds. During a month-long series of trips to western, eastern and southern Africa, Director Leocadia I. Zak signed grants for seven new energy projects in Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa.

At the Energy Business Development Mission to West Africa in May, Director Zak signed three grants for energy projects in Nigeria. Later at the U.S.-Africa Energy Ministerial in June, Zak signed two grants supporting renewable energy projects – one each in Tanzania and South Africa – and then traveled south where she signed two more grants for renewable energy projects in South Africa.

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency wrapped-up it’s road trip at June’s 16th annual Africa Energy Forum in Istanbul.At that Forum, delegates from the who’s who of Power Africa’s government funding agencies highlighted successes from the first year of the Power Africa initiative during a roundtable on “Accessing the U.S. Government’s Toolkit for Africa’s Power Sector.”

The African Plan

While the U.S. has been making their energy funding options and initiatives known, African energy ministers have been formalizing their own plan to pursue wider energy equality in the region themselves: the “Vision for African Power.”

Though vague, the African Power Vision is derived from the “Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa,” which is jointly sponsored by the African Union Commission, New Partnership for Africa’s Development and African Development Bank. According to the African Development Bank, the “Vision” is to “harness all African energy resources to ensure access to modern energy for all African households, businesses and industries by developing efficient, reliable, cost effective and environmentally friendly energy infrastructure resulting in poverty eradication and vigorous sustainable development of the continent.”

A meeting of African energy ministers was held March on the side-lines of the seventh Joint United Nations Economic Commission for Africa /African Union Annual Conference of Ministers of Finance, Economy, Planning and Development where a draft “Vision for African Power” was reviewed.

Another ministerial consultation on this Africa Power Vision took place on the margins of May’s World Economic Forum on Africa, held in Abuja. Convened by the Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance for Nigeria, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and co-hosted by Chinedu Osita Nebo, the Nigerian Minister of Power, that meeting further hashed-out details of the “Vision for African Power” to develop a roadmap to bring to the upcoming U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Carlos Lopes, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, stated: “The Power Africa Initiative is an enabler, and the Africa Power Vision, derived from the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa is focused on making projects more bankable and easier to sell.”

The Africa Power Vision roadmap was further discussed on the sidelines of June’s African Union Summit in Equatorial Guinea to get a final consensus.

But when and how the Africa Power Vision roadmap will be presented during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit is hard to say, though Tuesday’s big event U.S.-Africa Business Forum seems the logical choice.

“I think you’ll hear about that at the Summit,” Corporate Council on Africa’s Hayes told AFKInsider, who notes that it’s also bound to come up at the Corporate Council’s panel discussion during the Power Africa luncheon on Aug. 4, where energy ministers from Kenya, Nigeria, Cote D’lvore, and maybe Ethiopia will be on hand.

“Part of our plan was to have the energy ministers themselves, rather than U.S. government speakers, to talk about the Africa Plan. So I think you’ll hear about that from some of the energy ministers,” says Hayes.

In fact, much of what gets done at these types of summits and conferences happen in the fringes rather than the main event.

“There will be a lot of quality things happening around the margins,” former Connecticut Congressman Toby Moffett told AFKInsider.

More on that in Part 4 of this series.