Source: DEVEX.COM
Power Africa, President Obama’s $7 billion initiative to increase electricity access on the continent, is rallying supporters to generate some energy of its own.In the past week, both U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah and Power Africa coordinator Andrew Herscowitz addressed concerns from Washington’s development and energy policy communities about the initiative’s structure and long-term vision.Power Africa is more a “branding” and ramping-up of existing initiatives under a single label and management framework, than a wholly new policy strategy. Yet it has been billed by some as Obama’s “legacy initiative” for Africa, drawing comparisons to former-President Bill Clinton’s African Growth and Opportunities Act, which provided trade preferences to African countries, and former-President George W. Bush’s $15 billion Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.Obama’s plan to boost energy access in sub-Saharan Africa aims to coordinate U.S. government agencies and programs that are already engaged with the continent’s energy development, provide them with additional funding, and place U.S. government tools at the disposal of public-private partnerships deemed capable of accelerating and sustaining investment in Africa’s energy sector.
Categories: Africa