In Case You Missed It: 1/25/16 — 2/2/16

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Elec­tric­i­ty grid-trans­mis­sion lines

The most impor­tant in this week’s head­lines out of and con­cern­ing Africa, for those who need help catch­ing up.

In this week’s news, U.S. Com­merce Sec­re­tary under­takes a fact-find­ing mis­sion to Nige­ria and Rwan­da, Con­gress pass­es Elec­tri­fy Africa Act, and Pow­er Africa out­lines a roadmap for the future.

• U.S. Com­merce Sec­re­tary Vis­its Nige­ria and Rwan­da on Fact-Find­ing Mission 

U.S. Com­merce Sec­re­tary, Pen­ny Pritzk­er vis­it­ed Nige­ria, Jan­u­ary 25, and Rwan­da, Jan­u­ary 27, in what was termed a fact-find­ing mis­sion to both countries.

We’re told the Secretary’s del­e­ga­tion com­prised of senior mem­bers of the U.S. President’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil on Doing Busi­ness in Africa (PAC-DBIA).

“Their charge is to pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and me on pol­i­cy steps we can take to strength­en com­mer­cial engage­ment between the Unit­ed States and coun­tries across Africa, includ­ing how to build last­ing part­ner­ships between the U.S. and African pri­vate sec­tors,” accord­ing to a state­ment from Pritzk­er dur­ing the stop in Kigali, Rwanda.

“The President’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil on Doing Busi­ness in Africa advis­es the Pres­i­dent, through the Sec­re­tary of Com­merce, on ways to strength­en com­mer­cial engage­ment between the Unit­ed States and Africa.”

• Pow­er Africa Moves Ahead with a Roadmap 

Pow­er Africa, the U.S. gov­ern­ment-led ini­tia­tive to invest an esti­mat­ed $7 bil­lion to resolve the chal­lenges of elec­tric­i­ty access and gen­er­a­tion in sub-Saha­ran Africa took a giant step for­ward this week by lay­ing out a so-called roadmap on how it plans to achieve its goals.

Thus far the project has lever­aged an esti­mat­ed “$43 bil­lion in com­mit­ments from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, includ­ing more than $31 bil­lion in com­mit­ments from our pri­vate sec­tor part­ners, “accord­ing to the Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID).

Now in its third year, Pow­er Africa was launched by U.S. Pres­i­dent, Barack Oba­ma in 2013 with the aim of adding 30,000 new megawatts of clean elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and con­nect­ing 60,000 new homes and busi­ness­es to elec­tric­i­ty in sub-Saha­ran Africa by 2030.

Mean­while the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed the Elec­tri­fy Africa Act on Feb­ru­ary 1, tak­ing steps to ensure that Pow­er Africa ini­tia­tive is ful­ly imple­ment­ed. In Decem­ber 2015 the Sen­ate, the upper cham­ber of the U.S. Con­gress, passed its ver­sion of Elec­tri­fy Africa Act to move the ini­tia­tive forward.