By: Dr. Ousman Gajigo
In a recent press statement, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay claimed that The Gambia is on course to achieve universal electricity access before the end of 2026. This is not a new claim by the government. Dr. Ceesay previously claimed that The Gambia would achieve universal access by 2025, which was the official position of the government. Just as that claim turned out to be false, this new claim is equally false for several reasons.
Dr. Ceesay specifically stated: “Correct me if I am wrong, I think we are going to be the first country in West Africa, and perhaps also in sub-Saharan Africa, to reach 100 per cent universal access to electricity.”
Let me correct Dr. Ceesay because he got the facts wrong. The Gambia does not have the highest electricity access rate in sub-Saharan Africa, or even in West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, and Cape Verde all have higher electricity access rates than The Gambia, and all of these countries are in West Africa. There are even more countries in other areas of sub-Saharan Africa with higher access rates than The Gambia.
The more fundamental problem is that the metric of electricity access rate that this government is pursuing does not actually address the energy needs of the country. This is because the indicator is almost meaningless in a context such as The Gambia. In the definition used by the government, a household is considered to have access to electricity as long as it is connected to the grid. Whether or not that household actually receives electricity on a regular basis does not matter for this indicator.
In a country where there is ample electricity generation, this indicator can be a genuine measure of access. But that is not the situation in The Gambia today. We have limited generation capacity. Put differently, a household can endure a 99% blackout rate in a given period and would still be considered to have “access to electricity” under the metric being pursued by the government.
To provide households with electricity, the supply must be generated, which is lacking in The Gambia. The country has an electricity generation capacity of less than 100 megawatts -minuscule even for a small country such as The Gambia. As a result, most of the electricity consumed by Gambians is produced outside the country, specifically in Senegal. There has been no significant investment in local generation capacity since the Adama Barrow administration came to power.
Essentially, the Adama Barrow government is simply expanding distribution connections to households without having plans in place to supply them with adequate electricity. As a result, most of these new villages connected will be without electricity most of the time.
To drive home the point, imagine a situation where the government drills only one small borehole in a large town. Instead of ensuring that there is a large-capacity borehole with the ability to supply the whole town, the government decides to focus on connecting water taps in each individual compound so that it can claim universal access to water supply. The reality is that most people will not have running water despite the fact that there is an actual water tap in their compounds simply because there is no water pumping capacity.
This is the situation the country will face with electricity. For political reasons, the government is rushing to connect as many villages to the electricity grid as possible. But the reality is that the country is very far from the level of generation needed to adequately supply all the households being targeted by this government. As a result, load-shedding (excessive demand over limited power) will mean more frequent black-outs.
As President Barrow is about to embark on a tour of electricity access facilities, Gambians should be aware that his government is not credible when it comes to promises of delivering universal access to electricity. First, the government cannot meet their target of universal access in 2026 even when using this inappropriate metric. Second, the households that end up getting connected to the grid will not have access to reliable or affordable electricity after the 2026 elections.
There is a big difference between having infrastructural investment that contributes to the long-term development of the country versus infrastructural projects undertaken in pursuit of electoral strategy.
