Energy poverty is a major barrier to development, and this problem is particularly evidentinsub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of the population lives without access to electricity and clean cooking.The continent has more than enough resources to satisfy its current and future demands ,but most countries struggle with significant difficulties to attract large investments and to support virtuous small businesses, both necessary to run the race towards universal access to modern energy.

The important and wide-ranging role of energy in the development process is well known and it needs no retelling here. However, sufficeit to state that there is a strong feedback relationship between the energy sector and the national economy. Energy demand, supply and pricing have enormous impact on social and economic development and the living standards and overall quality of life of the population. On the other hand the economic structure and the changes in that structure as well as the prevailing macroeconomic conditions are key determinants of energy demand and supply. Furthermore, energy affects environmental quality through deforestation associated with unsustainable biomass energy dependence and green house gas emission from fossil fuel use resulting in global warming. Priorto 1973, the rate at which energy consumption increased closely followed the rate at which the economy expanded.

Beyond the low level of energy consumption per capita, and unsustainable over-dependence on bio-mass (wood-fuel), Africa is faced with enormous problems in the quest for sustainable energy development. For the purpose of addressing these problems effectively, we can summarize the fundamental energy question facing Africa as providing and maintaining wide spread access of the population to reliable and affordable supplies of environmentally cleaner energy to meet the requirements of rapid economic growth and improved living standards.

A major constraint to efficient energy development in Africa is the low priority given to energy efficiency and resource allocation issues indomestic debates, especially in much major net oil exporting economies. These issues are often submerged by the perception that oil is apolitical good, and sharing the oil cake must imply cheap domestic fue. Policy reforms based on the fundamental economic principle of opportunity costs stress the need for the separation of allocative and distributional objectives in the energy market and using policy instruments that have comparative advantage in achieving either objective efficiently. Prices have comparative advantage in achieving efficient resource allocation while taxes and direct income transfers, rather than price subsidies, are more efficient tools for achieving distributional objectives. The thrust of economic policy reform should be to properly balance economic and social objectives. However, the socio-political repercussions of dramatic policy reversal in a depressed economy should not be underrated as the policy reform experience of recent years in many countries demonstrate. In this regard there is need for caution in implementing severe shock-prone policy changes which could inflict very high short and medium term adjustment costs on the economy because of the way such policy changes are implemented. Fundamental reforms, which are hastily implemented under crisis condition without sufficient preparation, impose unnecessarily high cost on the economy interms of output losses and reduction in living standards. In addition the cost-push and output deflation effects of a more liberalized energy price policy and market environment must not be under-estimated in a depressed economy. The lack of policy stability and consistency compounds the problem too.

Opportunities

The potentials for efficient energy use pattern and ultimately achieving sustainable energy future are great, provided a number of problems identified earlier are effectively dealt with Interms of designing approaches and polices to deal with the challenges of sustainable energy development, in the over all context of sustainable human development, a variety of policies and other measures are suggested below.

• Policy interventions must encourage more efficient allocation of resources. Improvement in energy use pattern can only be sustainable when it is carried out in the context of a general improvement in the utilization of other productive resources.
• Policy interventions that correct market and government failures, which have encouraged in efficient energy, usepatterns. Such are evident in choices involving the construction and use of residential and public buildings, agricultural and industrial machines and equipment, and other capital stock.The market environment must be sufficiently free such that consumers can economically trade off energy costs against service quality without policy induced distortions.
• Capacity building in research and development that promotes the choice of economically and environmentally efficient energy use pattern.

References

African Development Bank (1996) The electricity subsector in Africa. Africa energy programe.Desai, AV. (1990) Energy in Africa. Willey Eastern Ltd. IDRC, and UN University TokyoInayemi, A. (1983) Energy in West Africa, Energy Policy, September 235-249.Africa Progress Panel (2015) Africa progress report 2015 - power people planet: Seizing Adeicans energy and climate opportunities Geneva.