Publication: Improving Utility Governance and Management in West Africa
Loading...
Date
2025-04-10
ISSN
Published
2025-04-10
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Most power utilities in West Africa are not financially sustainable. Several interrelated factors cause these performance issues, but dependence on liquid fuels, poor governance, insufficient use of information technology (IT), and weak balance sheets are particularly common and acute challenges. This paper is one of a series of three that aim to help West African utilities and governments - and the development financiers that support them - better understand and respond to these issues. The focus in the papers is primarily on utilities with a distribution function (that is, distribution-only utilities, transmission and distribution utilities, or vertically integrated utilities), but examples from other types of utilities (transmission only, generation and transmission) are drawn on when instructive. Though each paper’s approach is tailored to its topic, they share common features. Each paper contains: (i) a stocktaking of the scope of the challenge in West African utilities, sometimes informed by new data collected for that paper; (ii) conceptual frameworks to help readers deepen their understanding of the topic; and (iii) real-world country examples in the form of case studies and or utility deep dives. The insights presented in these papers draw on lessons learned from past World Bank engagement with client utilities and, in turn, have helped shape ongoing Bank operations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2025. Improving Utility Governance and Management in West Africa. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43055 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Turning the Lights on Across Africa(Washington, DC, 2013-04)Africa is in the midst of a power crisis. Despite abundant low-carbon, a low-cost energy resource, Africa faces chronic energy shortages. The region s power generation capacity is lower than that of any other region in the world, and when compared with other developing regions, its capacity growth has stagnated. The power crisis is the result of several constraints that, together, create a vicious cycle. Africa's electricity access is the worst in the world. Almost 70 percent of the continent s population (nearly 600 million people) and 10 million small- and medium-sized enterprises have no access to electricity. Sub-Saharan African's(SSA) account for nearly 45 percent of people lacking electricity across the globe. Most regions in the world have urban electrification rates of 90 percent or higher; in SSA, less than 60 percent of those living in urban areas have electricity. If current electricity connection trends continue, fewer than 40 percent of SSA countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050.Publication Improved Cookstoves and Better Health in Bangladesh(Washington, DC, 2010-06)The objective of this study is to identify lessons for improving cookstoves in Bangladesh through an evaluation of existing programs, the international experience on improved stoves, and the lessons from successes in the sanitation sector. Bangladesh's new renewable energy policy endorses creating a better environment for renewable energy technologies and promoting market development for improved cookstoves (Government of Bangladesh 2009). This study supports this policy direction by examining possible strategies to move forward the development of markets for improved stoves in Bangladesh. The study consists of several components: a national review of household energy programs; an evaluation of national sanitation programs; and an examination of improved cookstove programs from around the world, including China, Guatemala, Haiti, Mongolia, Nepal, and Uganda. The study is based on published literature, consultations with organizations throughout Bangladesh, site visits, and structured discussions with beneficiaries and other stakeholders.Publication Africa Energy Poverty : G8 Energy Ministers Meeting 2009(Washington, DC, 2009-05-24)Worldwide, about 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity services. There are also large populations without access in the poorer countries of Asia and Latin America, as well as in the rural and peri-urban areas of middle income countries. However large-scale electrification programs that is currently underway in middle income countries and the poor countries of Asia will increase household electricity access more rapidly than in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has the lowest electrification rate of all the regions at 26 percent of households, meaning that as many as 547 million people are without access to electricity. On current trends less than half of African countries will reach universal access to electricity even by 2050. Without access to electricity services, the poor are deprived of opportunities to improve their living standards and the delivery of health and education services is compromised when electricity is not available in clinics, in schools and in the households of students and teachers. The total financing needs for Africa to resolve the power supply crisis are of the order of approximately US$40 billion per annum or 6.4 percent of region's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In response to the power crisis, donors have increased their support to the power sector, though more is needed. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, donor assistance for the African power sector averaged no more than US$500 million per year. The private sector will be key to energy access expansion. For example, private sector expertise will be needed to develop the large complex generation and transmission projects (especially cross-border projects) that are necessary and for which a project finance approach will be often the most appropriate. The current global credit crisis poses additional challenges to mobilizing financing for energy infrastructure and especially for projects with perceived higher risk or higher costs. Nevertheless, governments can still access finance in the private markets for sound investments.Publication Implementing Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management : South Africa’s Standard Offer Model(Washington, DC, 2011-06)This report evaluates opportunities for South Africa to adopt a low carbon development pathway through a standard offer model. The standard offer aims to: provide customers and energy service companies a predetermined amount for delivered energy or demand savings, allow them to efficiently and rapidly structure and propose energy efficiency and demand side management projects, streamline the project approval process and scale-up project development and implementation, simplify the contracts between the utility and the energy service companies or customers, reduce the burden on the utility staff for project evaluation and processing, provide transparency to project proponents on the payments for delivered savings, facilitate the leveraging of commercial financing for energy efficiency projects, and reduce the utility's risk by making the payments. The report concludes that while South Africa has taken important steps towards implementing key elements of a national mitigation strategy; some practical problems, capacity limitations, and market and institutional barriers have affected the progress to date. The support outlined in this briefing note has helped to diagnose and address some of these limitations and barriers by adapting lessons from international experience to South Africa.Publication Clean and Improved Cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-11)Evidence from the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) survey on the global burden of disease shows that nearly 600,000 Africans die annually and millions more suffer from chronic illnesses caused by air pollution from inefficient and dangerous traditional cooking fuels and stoves. This tragic and avoidable first-order public health crisis disproportionately harms women and children. Moreover, cooking with wood, charcoal, crop waste, dung, coal, and potentially dangerous and polluting modern fuels, such as kerosene, also imposes tremendous direct costs on economies and households in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and contributes to a wide range of negative environmental and climate change effects.This overview report, prepared in support of the World Bank’s Africa Clean Cooking Energy Solutions (ACCES) initiative, builds on earlier reports from the World Bank and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC). The report establishes a baseline for the SSA cooking landscape and offers an overview of emerging opportunities to encourage increased investment in clean and improved cooking businesses across the region. This report covers the full range of clean and improved cooking solutions in SSA that can enhance the fuel efficiency and emissions performance of traditional technologies, each varying widely in terms of fuel feedstock, design, construction materials, methods of production, and harm mitigation potential.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Bank Annual Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This annual report, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, has been prepared by the Executive Directors of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)—collectively known as the World Bank—in accordance with the respective bylaws of the two institutions. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, has submitted this report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Greater Heights(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-12)Twenty-seven countries have reached high-income status since 1990. Ten of these are in the Europe and Central Asia region and have joined the European Union. Another 20 in the region have become more prosperous since the 1990s. However, their transition to high-income status has been delayed. These middle-income countries have found that the prospects for growth to high-income status have become even more difficult since the 2007–09 global financial crisis. This reflects partly a slowdown in structural reforms at home and partly the challenges associated with a deterioration in the global environment. The concern has emerged that many countries in the region may be caught in the middle-income trap, a phase in development characterized by a recurring deceleration in growth and by per capita incomes that are systematically below the high-income threshold. To ensure that these countries overcome the obstacles to growth and achieve progress toward high-income status, policy makers need to make the transition from a strategy driven largely by investment to a strategy that is supported by the importation and diffusion of global capital, knowledge, and technology and then to a strategy that complements these with innovation. The report Greater Heights: Growing to High Income in Europe and Central Asia relies on the 3i strategy described in World Development Report 2024—investment, infusion, and innovation—to propose policy options to assist middle-income countries in Europe and Central Asia in the effort to reach high-income status. Drawing on comprehensive empirical analysis, the report offers actionable recommendations that will enable policy makers to advance stronger economic growth across the region. Such a transition will require continued and sustained foundational reform to maximize the drivers of economic growth while pivoting to new transformative reforms to promote the development of more complex economic structures and institutions. These involve the need to discipline incumbents, boost the role of the private sector, strengthen the competitive environment, and reward merit. The emphasis on a strategy driven by innovation is also critically important for those countries that have already attained high-income status.Publication Western Balkans 6 Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2024-07-16)This Regional Western Balkans Countries Climate and Development Report (CCDR) stands out in several ways. In a region that often lacks cohesive regional alliances, this report emphasizes how the challenges faced across countries are often common and interconnected, and, importantly, that climate action requires coordination on multiple fronts. Simultaneously, it illustrates the differences across countries, places, and people that require targeted strategies and interventions. This report demonstrates how shocks and stressors re intensifying and how investments in adaptation could bring significant benefits in the form of avoided losses, accelerated economic potential, and amplified social and economic spillovers. Given the region’s high emission and energy intensity and the limitations of its current fossil fuel-based development model, the report articulates a path to greener and more resilient growth, a path that is more consistent with the aspiration of accession to the EU. The report finds that the net zero transition can be undertaken without compromising the economic potential of the Western Balkans and that it could lead to higher growth than under the Reference Scenario (RS) with appropriate structural reforms.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.