Nairobi (AFP) – The Iran war has exposed Africa’s vulnerability to fuel chokepoints and is heading for an 86 million tonne fuel shortfall by 2040, the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) said Thursday. Africa imports more than 70 percent of its refined fuel and some $230 billion worth of essential goods, including food, plastics, steel, and fertiliser each year, the AFC said in a report released at a Nairobi summit.
One possible part of the solution was announced at the summit where Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, told Kenya’s William Ruto and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni that he would build a refinery in east Africa similar to his huge complex in Nigeria. “I can give commitment to the two presidents that are here: If they will support the refinery, we’ll build the identical one that we have in Nigeria — 650,000 barrels,” Dangote told the audience.
Africa’s dependence on fuel imports will continue to rise from 74 million tonnes in 2023 to 86 million tonnes in 2040, the AFC, a Pan-African organisation that helps fund and develop infrastructure, said in its report. That is equivalent to almost three of Dangote’s Nigeria refinery — by far the biggest in Africa. East Africa’s vulnerability to supply shocks has been particularly exposed by the conflict in the Middle East and the resulting block on oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Ruto told the summit that the war showed the need for Africa to stop relying on outsiders. “Our ambitions will remain unrealised if we continue to depend on external capital whose primary interest is securing raw materials for their own industries,” said the Kenyan president. “We cannot continue to export raw materials and import finished products made from them,” he added.
Kenya last year announced an infrastructure splurge, including 50 new hydroelectric dams and 10,000 megawatts of additional power generation within seven years, as well as plans to revamp roads, rail, and airports. “While historical injustices from colonialism to inequities in the global economic order are real, we must also acknowledge that other regions have faced similar challenges, but they have risen above them,” Ruto said. “We are constrained only by the extent that we accept the status quo through acquiescence, complacency, and limited ambition.”
Fixing Africa’s energy shortfall requires new hubs and better performance from existing assets, the AFC report said. AFC’s chief economist Rita Babihuga-Nsanze highlighted the example of Zambian dams that were not designed to cope with new drought conditions, and two gigawatts of Angolan hydropower that was not connected to the regional grid and therefore went to waste. She also spoke of the fertiliser shortages caused by the war, since a high proportion comes from the Gulf.
Such vulnerabilities are “strange,” said Babihuga-Nsanze: Africa has 80 percent of the world’s phosphate reserves — a key fertiliser source — yet only produces 20 percent of the global stock. “There’s a real opportunity for Africa to step in the gap here,” she said.
© 2024 AFP
