South Africa has spent one trillion rand ($83 billion) on infrastructure projects in the last five years, but little of that money went into upgrading an aging electricity grid and power plants that has left residents and businesses in Africa’s second largest economy in darkness since late last year.

State owned power company Eskom that produces and supplies 95 percent of the country’s electricity, introduced a rolling power blackout across the country in October 2014 to allow it to upgrade it old grid and power plant.

The country’s National Treasury sees the “unreliable levels of electricity” as the biggest risk to economic growth.  South Africa’s growth rate has slowed in recent years hurt by lethargic labor unrest and now a power crisis.

According to a Deloitte study released in March, South Africa accounts for almost a quarter of the 257 infrastructure projects worth about $50 million currently being developed in Africa.

But where is all this investment going?

Washington Post reported that much of the $83 billion infrastructure spending by the South African government went to improved roads, airports, ports and rail lines.

“The numbers are big but the effectiveness of the infrastructure spending has been very, very poor,” Dennis Dykes, chief economist at South Africa’s fourth largest bank Nedbank Group, told Washington Post.

Capital Projects

“Thus far, we have got no return at all from a number of capital projects. We have got a major problem.”

Eskom is now running behind schedule in building the first two coal-fired plants since the 1980’s and this is expected to cost the country nearly 38 percent more that its 2007 estimates.

The company plans to invest over $23.5 billion on more than 8,000 projects in the next five years to increase its generation, distribution and transmission capacity.

The government has also contracted private companies to supply 5,243 megawatts of renewable energy to the national grid, and plans to buy 2,500 megawatts of power generated from coal and 3,126 megawatts from gas.

Andre Pottas, southern African head of infrastructure and capital projects at Deloitte, told Washington post the delay in upgrading and building new power stations was mainly due to lack of skilled engineers in the country.

“We will be in much better position by the time we get to 2020,” Dykes said.