Government secures $400m for rural electrification
Oct 27, 2014
The Government has secured about $400m from various development partners to implement a new 10 year rural electrification strategy and plan (2013-2022), a top official has said.
By Ronald Kalyango
KAMPALA - The Government has secured about $400m from various development partners to implement a new 10 year rural electrification strategy and plan (2013-2022), a top official has said.
Rural Electrification Agency (REA) Deputy Executive Director, Eng. Godfrey Werikhe, told journalists on the sidelines of an energy workshop at Kabira country club that the focus is to obtain the remaining $600m.
“We are on the right track to implement our strategic plan and to achieve this; we have divided the country into 14 service territories. But we shall need more private players to invest into rural electrification programmes,” he said.
He did not say how much each donor contributed but said he was optimistic that the organisation was already in advanced stages of extending electricity lines to unserved areas.
Power was extended to seven district headquarters of Kyankwanzi, Moroto, Napak, Katakwi, Amuria, Kiruhura and Kyegegwa last year, and work to extend to seven more districts is ongoing, he said.
He said identification of areas to extend to is done with the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.
Rural Electrification Authority’s spokesperson in-charge of outreach Dr. Patricia Litho said the technology, once embraced, is supposed to help network operators to manage faults and outages for better operation and maintenance of their electricity networks.
In its 2012/2013 annual report, the Rural Electrification Agency indicates that priority projects to be undertaken this financial year include supplying of electricity to Zombo, Koboko, Maracha, Yumbe and Bukwo district headquarters.
“We have constructed and commissioned over 8,000km of medium voltage lines, its good progress because from 1954 up to 2004 when Umeme took over electricity distribution only 6,000km medium voltage lines existed,” explained Werikhe.
He said REA intends to construct an additional 5,000 kilometres of medium voltage networks before 2016 so that the remaining district headquarters, health centres, schools and trading centres are connected.
“By the time REA was launched in 2001, only sixty out of the current one hundred and twelve districts had access to electricity. Today, 101 districts have been connected onto the main grid,” he explained.
“I am optimistic that all the remaining districts will be connected onto the national grid before 2016.”