Page 12 - AfrElec Week 09

AfrElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AfrElec
auditor general’s office which audits state- controlled companies.
“We are moving in to ensure that all points of consumption are metered. This is because most of the points we are metering, were being robbed... and that is contributing to system losses,” CEO Bernard Ngugi told reporters.
The company has fired 110 workers in the past year due to fraud and illegal connections to the grid carried out by people suspected to be its employees, Ngugi said.
It says its system losses from transmission are at 20%, well above the global benchmark of about 15%. The extra losses translate to
an annual loss of about 3.06bn shillings ($30.28mn).
The company is also trying to recover unpaid bills amounting to 20bn shillings from individuals and institutions in order to improve its future earnings, Ngugi said.
“We have given ourselves targets to collect that revenue to make ourselves more liquid,” he told reporters, without providing more details.
Kenya Power’s pretax profit for the first half to the end of December stood at 1.14bn shillings, down from 3.69bn shillings a year earlier.
DATA
Fraym launches data
initiative to boost
electrification in AFrica
Fraym, a geospatial data company that uses machine learning to produce local-level consumer data for emerging markets has launched a comprehensive initiative with the Shell Foundation, a UK charity, to increase electrification across Sub-Saharan Africa.
“The potential impact we can have on economies throughout Africa by increasing electrification is exactly the type of work we’re driven toward,” said CEO and Co- Founder Ben Leo. “We’re humbled by the Shell Foundation’s continued collaboration and look forward to sharing collective achievements within the year.”
Fraym’s powerful data will be made available to Shell Foundation portfolio companies, including Odyssey, via a web- based platform dataFraym.
This aims to decrease market barriers for both solar home systems (SHS) and mini- electrical grid companies,
Access to the tool allows teams to interact with local-level data in areas of interest, and
to test different scenarios based on target profiles.
In a 2018 pilot programme, an SHS company in East Africa used dataFraym to improve their business strategy. With access
to Fraym data, the team could interact with relevant population data, view the insights
on maps, and even combine their data with Fraym’s. As a result, the company learned their current efforts were misdirected and shifted their focus to high-potential locations. This resulted in a 2X increase in sales of solar home systems.
FRAYM
HYDRO
Trump tells Sisi to pursue efforts for GERD deal
US President Donald Trump told Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday that Washington will keep up efforts for a deal among Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over a dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile, Egypt’s presidency said.
The three countries had expected to sign an accord in Washington last week on the filling and operation of the $4bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), but Ethiopia skipped the meeting and only Egypt has initialled the deal thus far, Reuters reported.
“President Trump emphasised that the U.S. administration will keep up tireless efforts and coordination with Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over this vital issue until the three countries sign an agreement over the Renaissance Dam,” the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.
In its own statement on the phone
conversation, the White House said Trump “expressed hope that an agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam would be finalised soon and benefit all parties involved.”
Sisi told Trump that Cairo would continue “giving this issue the utmost attention in defense of the interests of the Egyptian people, their capabilities and their future,” the Egyptian presidency added.
The dam is the centerpiece in Ethiopia’s ambition to become Africa’s biggest power exporter. But it has sparked fears in Cairo that Egypt’s already scarce supplies of Nile river water, on which its population of more than 100mn people is almost entirely dependent, would be further restricted.
Egypt warns Ethiopia not to
start filling GERD under any
circumstances
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that Ethiopia cannot, under any circumstances, start filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) until an agreement is reached with the downstream countries.
Shoukry told Egyptian media that Egypt desires to reach an agreement and see Ethiopia follow the path of negotiations.
The Foreign Minister said Egypt wants
to settle the agreement within a political framework, especially in regards to the anticipated impact the GERD will have on downstream countries and the efforts required to preserve Egypt’s interests.
He assured that Egypt, though all its institutions, will find every available track to
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Week 09 05•March•2020