Private sector boosts for power and water

ELECTRICITY generation is seen as a possible growth area both for the economy and for potential investors. Uganda currently relies on imported petroleum to satisfy more than half the commercial demand for power. Successful exploitation of its hydroelectric generating potential, however, could turn the country into a power exporter to its neighbors.
The government has liberalized the power sector, ending the monopoly of the Uganda Electricity Board, unbundling it into four separate companies and slating the two responsible for distribution and generation for privatization via longterm concessions.

Power shortages are estimated to lose Uganda up to 2.5 percent a year in annual growth. This explains President Museveni’s enthusiasm for the $550 million, 250-megawatt Bujagali hydro station project–East Africa's largest-ever commercial investment–to be constructed 50 miles east of Kampala. The dam will make a considerable contribution towards redressing the country’s energy deficit.
The owner and operator will be Virginia-based AES Corporation. The consortium building the dam for AES includes companies based in Sweden, Norway, France and the U.S. The project is scheduled to start in the current financial year and Gerald Ssendaula, Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, recently described it as “very much on course.”

Only 3 percent of the population are connected to the national grid. For Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Syda Bbumba bringing electricity to the Ugandan people is a priority. “We have formulated a rural electrification plan which was rated by the World Bank as the best in the developing world,” she says.
Like electricity, safe drinking water is not something most Ugandans can take for granted. Only 60 percent have access to it within a reasonable distance. That’s a big improvement on ten years ago when the figure was just 18 percent, but the government is looking for private sector help to make further progress.
The Ministry of Water, Lands and Environment has the task of providing safe water for all Ugandans by 2015. Minister Ruhakana Rugunda says the government is seeking experienced private companies to take charge of the operations of water services.
“We are reforming the sector so that all that remains to us as a government will be an asset holding company.”