South Africa has one of the most advanced energy supplies in Sub Saharan Africa. For instance, South Africa’s coal power plants produce many times more energy than Nigeria, its West African rival, despite having a much smaller population.
This power supremacy has gone a long way in ensuring that South Africa remains the most industrialized economy in Sub Saharan Africa.
But of late, there have been hiccups that threaten that stellar record. South Africans are increasingly witnessing power outages.
And these outages are projected to get worse. The main reason for this is that several of the country’s coal power plants are reaching retirement age, but are not being replaced quickly enough.
Analysts say that any failure by the South African government to maintain top notch power supply might cause ease of doing business to plummet. There are fears that such a situation might stoke citizen frustrations which are currently on the rise.