By: Samuel P. Jackson, MSc, Merit Scholar
London School of Economics.
Consultancy Project: How Private Finance Capital can Improve Electricity Access in Liberia
I want Liberia to get MCC compact. But I don’t like UPists running around making it seem like this is all because of JNB 10 months in office. That is a bloody lie. Deceptive and intellectually dishonest. Secondly they were on social media saying JNB received a call offering him 500 million dollars. Thirdly the last compact money was wasted on an old 88 megawatt dam with severe technical deficiencies. Output decreases by 2/3 during the dry season. Go read the Mathematica Study on the mess created in the electricity sector. The report says the only good thing about compact money is that Liberia got an asset. The Dam. We are buying electricity from La Côte d’Ivoire 21 years after war. We still have over 50 percent of commercial losses due to power theft resulting from an archaic transmission and distribution system that does not efficiently supply power to ready customers and roguish behavior from LEC employees.
So we are that stupid we can’t create independent power producers and an efficient system of transmission and distribution? We can finance this so easily. Only an idiot will not know that utilities are the easiest to source funding due to the limited risks. When I worked in investment banking we used to joke that stocks and bonds of utility companies were for widows and orphans. So the fact that we as a nation cannot do the basic thing to bring abundant affordable electricity to our country is a blight on this nation. Now you will say I’m putting myself in this again but Ellen was offered 500 million dollars by Lula in 2012 for the Brazilian Development Bank to fund a bigger dam. Vale the Brazilian giant also proposed to build a 200 megawatt dam for Liberia in a bilateral deal. But zero came out because Ellen didn’t want to offend the Americans. Neh Dukuly Tolbert our former ambassador to China got a commitment from the Chinese to dam the Via River. Create capacity for hundreds of megawatts. To be built by Sino Hydro. Again Ellen resisted. I was aware and involved with the Brazilian proposal.
Only public private partnerships and a bilateral construct with one of the BRICS countries can increase electricity access in Liberia. The current ARREST Agenda Development Plan proposes to increase electricity access from the current 35 percent to only 55 percent in 2029. That’s not ambitious enough. It is the same minimalist development strategy employed over 21 years of postwar reconstruction that makes us the 8th poorest country on the planet.
We need bold plans. Grand development objectives. Liberia needs a big push on infrastructure. Multilateral funding from the development finance institutions will not accomplish that. We need private sector funding. We can accomplish that by derisking the business environment in Liberia.
Liberia must reduce its dependence on development funding from the straight jacket implementation strategies of the IMF and World Bank. That’s where creativity and innovation is needed to cut the umbilical cord from Breton Woods/Washington Consensus Plan to an indigenized approach to development.
Only a visionary leadership can accomplish that. And vision has been in short supply in our nation’s history. That’s the crux of our development challenges. And so it goes.
Note: If you want a copy of my LSE Consultancy Project you can email me at samuelpjackson@yahoo.com
