Electric vehicles (EV) are a poster child for the so-called green transition. Even in some of the world’s poorest economies, an unquestioning embrace of all things “green” on the part of political elites powers a push for the adoption of electric vehicles.
No Country for Fancy Toys
A report from the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) states that “the power system infrastructure [in developing countries] especially continues to provide defective services and is vulnerable to external shock.”“Grids, on both transmission and distribution levels, are, in many cases, unreliable because of inadequate capacity, lack of maintenance and reinforcement, and a host of other operational issues,” the report reads.
The upshot is grids in a majority of African nations are not able to support EV adoption. It is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa experiences nine power outages every month, each lasting for more than five hours. This is hardly service sufficiently adequate to make EVs reliable for daily transportation.
Those experiencing blackouts at least have some access to electrical service. There are many others who have none.
As of 2022, less than half of the population in the region had access to electricity. The IEA’s data suggest that 660 million globally are projected to remain without electricity in 2030, “of which 85 percent or about 560 million people will be in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
In other words, we are dealing with a population that is yet to have electricity for basic lighting and appliances. Moreover, the situation will not improve substantially any time soon.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty is another major barrier to the region’s widespread adoption of electric vehicles. The cost of even electric bikes is generally higher than that of their gasoline-powered counterparts. For many prospective buyers, this is a major deterrent.
Even if we are to assume that buyers will save money on fuel, most Sub-Saharan Africans simply cannot afford the upfront costs of electric vehicles. For most people in this region, internal combustion engines are a more practical option due to their relative affordability, superior availability of spare parts, and ease of refueling.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the push for electric vehicles is a diversion from the region’s more urgent problems. First among these is the people’s well-documented poverty followed by related challenges, such as inadequate electrification, unreliable power service, and the urgent need to address basic sanitation, nutrition, freshwater access, conventional mobility, and economic development.
With General Motors and Ford Motor Co. cutting back EV production because of slow sales in the United States—the richest country on Earth—the promotion of EVs to Africans looks all the more ridiculous.
