September 20
Yesterday, I was honoured to receive the 'Person of the Year' award at the Africa Investor CEO Institutional Investment Summit hosted alongside the UN General Assembly in New York.
I dedicated my award to all Transcorp Power staff who remain committed to realizing our dream of improving access to electricity in Nigeria and making our vision of a well-lit, fully powered Nigeria come true. Because of their hard work and diligence, Transcorp Power is now the biggest producer of thermal energy in Nigeria, providing about 18% of national output: As many of you know, Transcorp Power has also supported U.S. President Obama's Power Africa initiative with a $2.5billion commitment.
I also dedicated my award to all stakeholders working hard to improve access to power in Africa. I strongly urge local and global institutional investors to consider long-term opportunities on the continent to join us in this journey to powering Africa out of poverty. This call to the investment community is critical as the economies of African regional powerhouses like Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Nigeria and Angola struggle due to excessive exposure to commodities' prices caused by limited diversification. We need a sustainable solution to reduce our historical external vulnerability. Africa has been faced with this same challenge, in my view, for far too long.
I choose to look at the recent episodes of economic contraction across the continent as opportunities to diversify our economies and invest in building critical infrastructure, especially in power, to reduce our susceptibility to commodity shocks and break out of the perpetual boom-bust cycles.
To ensure a different type of growth trajectory for Africa – one that does not rely exclusively on the export of primary commodities – there must be reliable, accessible, affordable electricity, to support industrialization on a massive scale to power us out of chronic dependency on commodities. We must power Africa's next phase of development, by targeting and prioritizing growth of our manufacturing, industries and services.
While there is an abundance of private capital available, at the local and global levels, to be deployed to develop the African power sector, government must play its part in attracting these investments. As we know, private capital goes to where it is most welcome. Our African governments should ensure that they create a conducive environment that will attract and retain these investments in our continent. Foreign investors can also overcome most environmental challenges by entering partnerships with qualified local partners who possess the right knowledge, requisite capital and technical know how.
It is critical for the public and private sectors to work together in "SHARED PURPOSE", which is a key tenet of Africapitalism - the economic philosophy I espouse, which calls for the private sector to play a key role in Africa's social and economic development by investing in strategic sectors for both economic profit and social prosperity.
In conclusion, I stressed the critical role of power in creating opportunities for Africa's jobless youth. In the 21st century, the level of poverty we have in Africa and the dire youth unemployment, to a large extent, can be solved by improving access to power, and by extension other infrastructure deficiencies and deficits. The African Energy Leaders Group (AELG), a community of African energy leaders including Presidents and leading corporates which I co-chair, and other positively like-minded coalitions are making progress, but there is still a lot to be done. We need faster progress.
Tony Elumelu
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