- Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration has listed almost all of Power Africa’s programs for termination and most of its staff fired.
- Some remaining programs, particularly those aimed at connecting projects with US companies, may be retained under other US agencies, they said.
- The USAID Power Africa website has been taken down.
“Each program is undergoing a review with the goal of restructuring assistance to serve US interests,” a State Department spokesperson said in a reply to questions from Bloomberg. “Programs that serve our nation’s interests will continue. However, programs that aren’t aligned with our national interest will not.”
Power Africa, which operated under the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was initiated under former President Barack Obama to add 30 gigawatts of cleaner electricity generation capacity and 60-million connections to homes and businesses. The end of the initiative that provided technical and legal expertise, as well as coordinating private sector and government interactions, may slow efforts to boost power generation in sub-Saharan Africa where almost half of the population of about 1.3-billion lacks access to electricity.
It is also likely that the USA JET funding pledge of US$ 1 billion to South Africa, which has been on the table for a better part of four years, will also be formally withdrawn.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
