The peri-urban electrification programme in Sub Sahara Africa will improve the lives of some 15 million households and over 110 million people. It will create energy efficiencies calculated of over 7% of the region’s current electricity consumption, which is the equivalent of over ~7 million Tonnes of CO2 emissions. Per household the energy efficiencies account for some ~40% of the current consumption, including the savings generated by the upstream improvements.
The electricity distribution lines in Pikine are limited to the principal streets. Throughout much of the residential zones there is no official power distribution. This creates a situation that is different from Paraisópolis. 'While electricity theft is indeed a problem here, it is not the primary one. The main problem is illegal selling-on and sub-distribution,' reports Dôme.
The social aspect in the project will be very important. 'We want to cooperate as much as possible with the inhabitants of these urban zones,' notes Dôme. 'An important part of the project will be education. One part of the education programme will be the training of families migrating from rural areas who know nothing about electricity.
The International Copper Association has already found two partners in Sénégal that are willing to participate in a slum electrification project: the utility company SENELEC and the association PROQUELEC. The latter is a member of FISUEL, whose mission is to promote electrical safety. 'We are still looking for more partners,' says Dôme, 'but I’m confident we will find them soon.
Sénégal has virtually no experience with slum electrification projects. Benoît Dôme: 'The only exception is a project of the German Development Bank GTZ for the complete redevelopment of one part of the slum. This project included street paving, water supply, construction of schools and hospitals and electrification.
The Pikine slum on the outskirts of Dakar is huge and growing rapidly. Today it has about 850,000 inhabitants. This figure is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2020. This makes it by far the largest slum in Sénégal. Benoît Dôme: 'You can’t compare Pikine with Paraisópolis in Brazil, where we developed our first project. Pikine covers a much larger area but it is much less densely built up.
'After initiating the project in Brazil, we wanted to start a second project, this time in Africa', recalls Dôme. 'We chose Sénégal because it is representative of sub-Saharan African income and energy requirements.'
The following article is based on an interview with Benoît Dôme and describes the state of electrical supply in the Pikine slum outside Dakar. It indicates how a slum electrification project could be set up in this area. The article is published as an eBook and readers can scroll down to the different pages using the titles below.
Seen rising up the side of this home’s wall is the access point of illegal power into this dwelling – next door is the well that is its <> and the surrounding dwellings’ water supply. The homes seen here are all powered by illegally access energy, as far as the eye could see.
Technical losses also come from inefficient domestic appliances – seen here are examples of the many used refrigerators that are imported from, among other place, France, Germany and Spain.
As the cables are often not buried under the sand pathways between homes re exposed to passing traffic. In this case is seen a common example of exposed live wires that have burnt through temporary insulation; in the rare occasions when it rains not only is the immediate contact a danger but the now wet sand creates a wider danger zone becoming an extended, unintended conductor.
Access to electricity illegally is often taken from the past legal distribution point that can be up to 1000m away from the first household constituting the so-called “non-technical” losses. The orange cable seen in this photo is the “final distribution” that is open to both the elements and to passing pedestrians, horse and carts and motor vehicles. Accidents caused by these illegal connections mostly go unreported because of the illegality of the electricity sourcing.
