‘Significant implications’ for design of African power markets as renewables prices fall

Recent renewable energy price reductions, together with sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA’s) formidable solar and wind resources, have made solar and wind technologies the cheapest sources of power in several countries, which carries significant implications, a newly published academic paper argues, for how the region’s relatively undeveloped power systems are designed. Titled ‘Independent Power Projects (IPP) in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investment trends and policy lessons’, the paper has been co-authored by the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business’s professor Anton Eberhard, independent consultant Katharine Gratwick, as well as Elvira Morella and Pedro Antmann, both of the World Bank.