Ghana’s electricity data transparency is identified as being of good quality, scoring 3/5 which shows the availability of better-than-annual granular data with some fuel breakdown and other data, according to Ember energy, an independent climate and energy think tank.
While Ghana works on about six-month time lag, it provides several other data metrics through the Ghana Energy Commission (GEC) as well as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), though data is available in PDF format which does not pass the ease of download criteria. As Ember puts it, Ghana’s data includes “comprehensive data on generation, capacity, transmission and distribution, and demand profiles.”
Based on the assessment, Ghana’s annual generation is disaggregated by high-level fuel grouping (‘hydro’, ‘thermal’ and ‘other renewables’). The scope of data also captures detailed disaggregation of renewable capacity, by system (off-grid, on-grid and mini-grid) and technology (solar, including distributed and utility-scale; wind, and hydro). There is also additional data on exports and imports, peak load profile, transmission losses, distribution and sales consumption-by-sectors, and distribution reliability.
That said, Ghana does not stand alone with a 3/5 score, as four other countries in the region, namely: Kenya, Namibia, Uganda and Burundi fall in this category. Capturing data on the 54 African countries, and assessing each country’s electricity data transparency, 23 (42%) had only very old national data available, or nothing at all. South Africa scored the highest in the Ember evaluation of data availability and quality, but no country scored 5/5 rating.
South Africa scored a 4/5 as it consistently provides monthly or better data with high detail. The data displays hourly granularity of generation, import and export data going back to the first quarter of 2017; and is broken down by generation source, capacity, demand, outage and load factor. While no financial data is included on the website this can be requested.
The South African Department of Mineral Resources and Energy publishes annual, comprehensive fuel-split energy balance data, though with a very long lag as the most recently available energy balance available to the authors of the report was 2018. Stats SA publishes monthly generation and distribution data, albeit with no fuel-split and the data needs a high level of expertise to comprehend.
The evaluation of country-specific data were based on publishing lag, level of disaggregation (in-terms of fuel types and geography), granularity, ease of download, and other data metrics. In line with the chosen criteria, the think tank underscored that “national data is available for many countries in Africa, but the quality is generally low, with long lag times and inconsistent publishing frequency.”
Many Countries Underperform in Electricity Data Transparency
Compared to Ghana, its West African peer Nigeria, however, scored 1/5 with little or low-quality with a long lag time for availability from official sources. While the Nigeria Electricity System Operator does publish daily reports on the Nigerian electricity grid, there is no disaggregation of fuels, plants or units or detail on electricity consumption beyond peak demand. The data is published in PDF format but with no aggregation or inclusion of historic data. So, data is difficult to parse over longer analysis periods.
Guy Cunliffe, Ember energy and sustainability analyst and report author said:
“While data availability across Africa is improving, there are many gaps. Improving this will be critical to make sure that decision makers are armed with the best possible information to guide the clean electricity scale-up in each country”.
Guy Cunliffe, Ember energy
Twenty-one (21) of the countries evaluated were identified as having no public information available. While some countries have data problems due to occurrences of conflict, Cȏte d’Ivoire is a surprising addition to the 0/5 list, considering the fact that, that is where the African Development Bank is headquartered.
Indeed, as infrastructure evolves, including electricity systems, and also ICT and data systems, it is likely that data transparency will continue to improve- but Africa will need substantial support to accelerate these developments, the report indicated.
According to the independent climate and energy think tank, timely, reliable and publicly available data is critical to inform and track Africa’s electricity. Robust data can support efforts to ensure that renewable energy project demand growth accelerates as the reliance on fossil fuels dwindles.
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