ECCAS’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE The power sector performance of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) is weaker than other parts of Africa as measured by many criteria. Table 3.1 corroborates the glaring absence of installed generation capacity in Central Africa. Southern Africa has seventeen times the installed capacity of Central Africa, and West Africa seven times. The per capita generation capacity in CEMAC, though better than East Africa, is much lower than southern and West Africa. The frequency of power outages and the loss of value however, are not dramatically different than in West and East Africa. Despite the lack of power generation, a relatively large share of the population has access to power. Utility performance in the CEMAC region is particularly poor. Over 30 percent of the already minimal generation is lost due to system outages. And, at less than 50 percent, cost-recovery rates are the worst in Africa.

**Table 3.1 . Benchmarking power infrastructure and capacity, access, and utility performance**

||ECOWA<br>S|CEMA<br>C|COMES<br>A|EAC|SAD<br>C|Low-<br>income<br>countries|Middle-income<br>countries|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Installed generation capacity (MW)|3,912|583|1,085|774|9,85<br>5|2,110|36,971|
|Net generation per capita, annual<br>(kWh/capita/year)|171|147|114|82|1214|165|4,479|
|Outages, number, annually (number/year)|165|152|119|132|91|134|71|
|Outages, value lost, annually (% of sales)|7|5|7|8|2|5|2|
|Firms with own generator (% of firms)|54|51|43|56|19|33|18|
|Access (urban, % of population)|50|31|34|23|35|43|50|
|Growth in access of population to electricity,<br>annual (%)|2|1|1|1|1|3|2|
|System losses (% of generation)|29|31|32|23|12||10|
|Cost recovery ratio, historical (%)|79|45|73|69|68|100|87|
|Total hidden costs (% of revenue)|159|107|102|65|4|544|0|
|Collection rate, reported by utility, electricity (% of<br>billing)|71|93|93|94|89||91|
||WAPP||CAPP|EAP<br>P|SAP<br>P|||
|Average historic cost (US$/kWh)|0.21||0.49|0.19|0.14|─|─|
|Long-run marginal cost (US$/kWh)|0.18||0.09|0.12|0.07|─|─|
|_Source:_Eberhard and others 2008.||||||||

_Note:_ CEMAC = Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa; COMESA = Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa; EAC = East African Community; ECOWAS = Economic Community of West African States; SADC = Southern African Development Community; kWh = kilowatt-hour; MW = megawatt; WAPP = West African Power Pool; EAPP = East African Power Pool (expanded to include the key Nile Basin trading partners Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan); CAPP = Central Africa Power Pool; SAPP = Southern African Power Pool.

The remainder of this section will focus on the Central African Power Pool (CAPP) countries. This is because power sector issues in Central Africa are best analyzed in the context of regional trade arrangements. For the purposes of this analysis, the CAPP is defined as including Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.<sup>4</sup> The CAPP will be 4 The Democratic Republic of Congo also belongs to the CAPP. But the AICD analysis does not allow for the same country to belong to more than one regional power pool, and so the Democratic Republic of Congo was mapped to 34