Lusaka — Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario on Tuesday said that the electrification of Africa is an essential component for industrialization and for development in general. He was speaking in Lusaka, at a round table held as part of the Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank (ADB), at which he is representing President Filipe Nyusi.
Rosario called for balanced electricity tariffs, calculated on a “win-win” basis, in which there are gains both for the companies that generate, transmit and distribute electrical power, and for the end consumers. Improved technologies needed to be mobilised, he added, to ensure that damage to the environment is reduced to a minimum.
The ADB itself announced, at the opening of the annual meeting that, over the next five years, it will invest 12 billion US dollars in the African energy sector. Rosario praised this initiative, and added “we must be prepared to see what the mechanisms for access to these funds are so that we can apply for them and make our programs viable”.