ECAS 2013

For decades African energy resources remained under-explored owing to a variety of reasons including low commodity prices, lack of investment, poor infrastructure, geographical obstacles and political instability. Over the past decade the surge in demand for mineral fuels driven by fast growing emerging economies and the concomitant gradual stabilisation of the continent prompted a renewed interest in Africa's vast untapped resources. Investment is pouring in from all directions helping to uncover the real scale of Africa's energy reserves. Traditional oil producers in the Gulf of Guinea (from Nigeria to Angola) have been joined in recent years by a handful of new producers, namely, Ghana, Niger, Chad, Uganda with few more in the making (Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, Etc.). To complete this picture massive natural gas reservoirs have been discovered off the Eastern coast of Africa as well as vast coal deposits in Mozambique and large uranium reserves in Namibia and Niger.

These new developments have been in a great deal propelled by new streams of investment originating from emerging countries. The newcomers are now fiercely competing for assets not only with long established western companies but among themselves.

This paper proposes to compare Brazilian and Chinese engagement in Africa's energy sector. It aims at analysing the similarities and differences regarding their motivations, policies, strategies and implementing agents.

Chinese NOCs' expanding role in Sub-Saharan Africa as importers and oil investors reveals a lot about the dynamics of their growing presence in the international oil market. Rather than studying the subject in the framework of bilateral relations or the relationship between NOCs and Beijing, as most existing literature does, this chapter explores why and how the behavior of Chinese NOCs has changed over time in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter contends that Chinese NOCs' history (past experiences, accumulated knowledge) and relentless drive to accumulate reserves for profit and for status shaped their interactions with other industry players and the external environment. Changes in the latter in turn led to changes in Chinese NOCs' behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of this continuous feedback Chinese NOCs developed and adopted a unique hybrid set of strategies, which includes strategies typical of successful private oil companies, and others reminiscent of those adopted by the heavily government-supported Japanese NOCs in the 60s and 70s. Despite some variation in how the different Chinese NOCs have adopted this hybrid set of strategies, they have all used it to increase (albeit at a lower rate than the media suggests) their access to Sub-Saharan Africa's growing oil reserves. Regardless of Chinese NOCs accomplishments, this chapter maintains that these practices might put Chinese NOCs' long-term presence in Sub-Saharan Africa in jeopardy.

In their respective roles as Africa's formerly dominant imperial power and the dominant power of the post-WWII era, Britain and the United States have significant economic and strategic interests across sub-Saharan Africa including in the continent's crucial energy resources. In the last decade, the power and influence in Africa of major Western powers has experienced a relative decline as emerging markets of the Global South, in particular China, have rapidly entered African markets to pursue their own economic and strategic interests. A proliferating literature on the 'new scramble for Africa' - not only its energy and other natural resources, but also its growing commercial markets - reflects this global power shift away from the West. How established powers like the US and Britain can protect and expand their vital energy interests in Africa will significantly impact on their ability to remain competitive and powerful economic actors, despite relative decline vis-à-vis emerging markets. The increasing competition for Africa's resources and markets also has profound implications for the possibility of African states to promote their own interests in the pursuit of socio-economic development. This paper investigates how American and British strategies in competing for energy resources in Africa differ from each other, and how they compare to the strategies employed by the major emerging market states. It does so by drawing on interviews conducted in Washington, London and Brussels with policymakers and related actors engaged with African economic relations, as well as the growing political and economic literature on the 'new scramble for Africa'.

The increasing multipolarisation of the global order has prompted a new scramble for oil and gas resources in Africa. While this race has traditionally been among Western International Oil Companies (IOCs), China and other emerging powers have forayed into this struggle with mostly State-Owned IOCs. Focusing on Nigeria, the paper examines how the nature and approach of IOCs create threats and opportunities in terms of:

(1) The dynamics of distribution of oil proceeds among the oil companies (access/licenses/profits), national elites (harmonization vs. fragmentation of elites in the distribution of oil rents) and local population (impact of the distribution of oil resources on poverty and inequality);

(2) The structural economic impact on the domestic political economy of Nigeria (i.e. oil-based enclave vs. diversified economy) and at the global level (a hierarchy of states where oil exporters remain at the fringe of the global economic order, as suppliers of energy resources).

The paper concludes on the position that more effective institutions are required at the national level (Nigeria's Petroleum Industry Bill - PIB), regional level (ECOWAS, AU) and global level (Dodd-Frank Act, EU legislation, BRIC treaties to regulate IOCs) to ensure egalitarian distribution of oil rents within exporting countries, to develop linkages to non-oil sectors, to minimize capture of rents by societal forces and to provide a level playing field for all IOCs; to give African energy exporters more bargaining power at the regional level vis-à-vis IOCs and to institute an effective regime of global governance at the global level.

Although still in their early days, BRICS's energy ties with the African continent have significantly widened and deepened during the last few years. Hydrocarbons, mining and infrastructure projects for moving minerals resources drive new player's engagements. Hence, it is not surprising that also South African corporations and as well as coal, ore and uranium mines in the Southern Africa remain favorite acquisition targets for top companies from the BRIC. In the background, there is indication for a broader shift of South Africa's formerly inward-looking and protected economy which is becoming less South African. Some of the transformations can be made evident by indicators of changing private business practice, among others a more deliberate and aggressive searching for new partnership opportunities.

With the rise of BRICS, much has been written on trilateral cooperation in Africa. The complex overlap of South Africa's and the other club members' economic interests on the African continent is rather blurred. Still, perceptions, capabilities and responsiveness of South African corporates which offer a high degree of technical expertise remain to be explored through ethnographic interviews in companies and expert's consultations. Can the so called minerals-energy-complex become part of certain areas where cooperation and synergies have great potential on a corporate level? This paper presents a first foray into South African companies' searching for relative stability in increasingly competitive markets.

Power pools were formed to improve network efficiency and power exchange between two or more utilities. The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) has been established in 1995 with the aim to supply electricity to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States. The SAPP covers policy, coordinates planning and the interconnected regional power system, and involves governments, power utilities and financial agencies. Today, the SADC is faced with diminishing generation capacity, the SAPP therefore attempts to encourage investments in the region and launch infrastructures development.

Inga I and II existing hydropower stations are experiencing recurrent problems: Kinshasa is regularly plunged into darkness by power cuts. It didn't prevent the DRC government from rejecting the Inga site development proposed by Westcor, a consortium led by the SADC Member States national companies. Nevertheless, in 2011, Presidents Kabila and Zuma signed a Memorandum of Understanding, and in 2012 agreed on a draft treaty for (re)launching the Grand Inga project. DRC is not only part of the SAPP, but also involved in the Eastern and Central African Power Pool (EAPP and CAPP). In 2008, a tripartite agreement has been signed between EAPP, SAPP and COMESA, thus paving the way for partnerships between regional organizations and regional energy markets.

In this paper, the challenges between South Africa and DRC will be identified at the regional level with a focus on the energy actors involved in the Inga hydropower stations and on the cooperation/competition between South Africa and DRC for the project benefits.

In January 2008, South Africa's national electricity supplier Eskom had to ask its largest customers to reduce their use of electricity temporarily to minimum levels. Meeting the government's GDP growth targets will require 47,000 megawatts of additional capacity within the next twenty years, which is impressive considering that the current demand is 36,000 megawatts. This situation is worsened by the fact that Africa's economic powerhouse lacks sources of energy other than coal.

At the same time, the neighbouring countries possess vast potentials for generating electricity. Giant hydropower stations are envisaged in the DRC. Gas has been found along the coasts of Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania. Regional cooperation on electricity, moreover, fits into South Africa's cooperative foreign policy. The Southern African Power Pool constitutes an according institutional frame. However, regional cooperation is not the only option. Shale gas may be exploited in the Karoo. It promises energy autarky; so does nuclear power, which is to be expanded significantly according to present build-up plans.

In this paper, I reveal "cognitive schemes" of decision takers from Eskom and the government, which explain how their strategies on electricity come into existence. Cognitive schemes show how someone structures a specific issue, how he/she identifies obstacles and opportunities, and links them to agendas, which then guide his/her action. Interviews with officials from Eskom and the government as well as documents published by them are examined for this purpose.

Africa has historically been regarded as a continent rich in raw materials, in particular, energy resources. Consequently, the role of many African economies has been as primary exporters, meaning that they occupy a dependent position in the world economy as primary producers. An important part of the literature on this theme adopts the notion of 'the resource curse' as a way of assessing this kind of economic activity. Advocates of this position have looked for case studies in African countries. Discussion on this subject has become increasingly polarised in recent years with the discovery of new energy resources from non-traditional African producers and the sharp increase in the demand for their energy products by various emerging countries, adding to the already high demand from the countries of the North.

Mozambique, for decades identified as an exception on the continent to the traditional possession of wealth in energy resources, has recently changed this pattern, starting ambitious exploration and exploitation projects for several energy resources (principally coal, gas and oil). This new situation is opening up interesting and unprecedented discussion on possible paths to development in the country. This discussion assesses whether the growing influx of both Northern and Southern foreign energy companies, and the government's policies to attract them and regulate their activities, can bring substantial benefits both to those concerned in the energy sectors and to the Mozambican population as a whole.

This paper argue that since the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the late 1960s economic growth in Nigeria has been very erratic, driven particularly by volatility of oil revenues and the boom-bust economic cycle experience in the country is directly related to over- reliance on oil revenues. But much more important are poor governance, endemic corruption, and mismanagement of the revenues, and then examines the extent to which the rush for oil revenue and allocation in Nigeria have resulted in perpetual dependent on oil, and how gross mismanagement of the same hinders any meaningful socio-economic development.

In 2003, the federal government introduced socio-economic reform programme in key sectors of the economy - the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), a medium-term development strategy with long term policy foundation. Its objectives are mainly fourfold: poverty reduction; employment generation; wealth creation and value re-orientation. These reform policies yielded some results in the form of savings and huge foreign reserves and exiting the country from both the Paris and London Clubs debtors' lists. But the gains and progress of the reform programme are now on the verge of being jeopardized, due to the slowdown in the implementation and in some cases outright cancellation of these reform policies and government development projects and programmes since 2011 by the present government. I conclude that the expansion and then decline of such development policies and programmes are negatively impacting on socio-economic development and governance in Nigeria

A number of transnational oil companies have recently been given the go ahead by the South African government to initiate fracking for the exploration of shale gas in a semi-arid part of the country, the Karoo region, despite a lack of robust regulatory procedures being in place. When she lifted the moratorium, the minister of mineral resources provided no indications of the source from which the substantial quantity of fresh water necessary for fracking would be derived. Existing economic sectors fear the contamination by the oil companies of local groundwater, on which all farming and tourism in the area relies, and a subsequent loss of livelihoods, biodiversity and heritage. In the race to exploit the resource, encouraged by the National Planning Commission, a grab will be made for up to 20 per cent of South Africa's land surface. The country's mineral rights are not vested in landowners but in the state, which has allocated them to the oil transnationals. Taken together with scarce water resources, the cost of the industry's activities will be far higher than the temporary energy dividend. The presentation looks at potential impacts of shale gas exploration and mining, raises questions about the functioning of the new South African democracy in deciding on controversial new technologies, and proposes steps that need to be put in place in the short 6-12 month window granted by the minister for this purpose.

In September 2012 the South African government lifted the ban on shale gas extraction in South Africa. While this move was welcomed by energy companies/IOCs, it sparked strong protests by local communities and environmental groups. Drawing on research on shale gas development in North America and Europe, this paper discusses relevant economic and environmental issues raised by this new energy frontier. The paper then looks at shale gas development in South Africa, its potential and pitfalls.

This paper documents and explains the ongoing transformation of the Kenyan power sector as it shifts from a national concern to a truly global assemblage. The term assemblage refers to a novel and dynamic set of relationships that conforms to a specific pattern. These relationships are both emergent and stable, contingent and regular. More importantly, they serve to reorient particular components of institutions and specific practices--both public and private--toward global logics and away from historically shaped national logics. This reorientation has become particularly evident in the exploitation of renewable energy resources across the African continent. Whereas the postcolonial African state used to be the sole owner, operator, and organizer of a national power sector in the pursuit of national development objectives, it is now but one, though significant, actor in a global assemblage that seeks to expand access to electricity in the service of overlapping national, regional, and global goals. Our analysis of seven ongoing, large-scale, renewable energy projects in Kenya reveals a complex network of nearly 100 actors, including state entities, bilateral aid agencies, development finance institutions, energy-related investment funds, and transnational corporations. We argue that this current assemblage has profoundly impacted the capacity of the postcolonial Kenyan state to exercise control and implement policy choices in the territory it claims to govern.