ENERGY RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA: Potentials and Sustainable Energy Delivery

Abstract

Energy resources constitute a substantial part of natural resources of many nations. The energy resources confer advantages on the resource nations as they provide the base for energy development, support economic development and provide export commodities. Southern Africa has some fossil fuel resources of natural oil, natural gas, and coal. It also has uranium deposits for nuclear energy development. With the global attention shifting to renewable and cleaner energy sources, it is advantageous that Southern Africa is also endowed with renewable energy resources. The advantage of its position relative to the Equator, the vast land that accommodates high wind speed, the vast tropical forest that yields bio-energy resources and coastlines that permit access to the ocean for off-shore wind energy and ocean energy, provide the renewable energy resources to help in achieving universal access. The objectives of the study are to profile the non-renewable energy resources of the Southern Africa subregion, understand the potentials of the renewable energy resources and draw implications of the energy resources for energy delivery in the Southern Africa subregion. The paper notes that while non-renewable energy resources are confined to a few countries, all the countries have advantages of renewable energy resources with adequate distribution of wind and solar energy resources. The paper also notes that clean non-renewable resources of natural gas and uranium can be adequately combined with the renewable energy resources to harvest the advantages of the two groups of energy resources for achieving the twin goals of universal energy access and green energy development.