Hello, everyone. Hi. Oh, thank you so much for braving the weather and fighting the rain and being here.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the second in seconds, Hillary time.
Yeah, yeah. OK. Oxford lingo is lost on many of us.
So welcome. Welcome. And we're really grateful that you you made it here today.
For those who are joining us for the first time, a very warm welcome.
Our folks in the skies are really the most exciting thing you could be doing on a Friday afternoon.
And for those who haven't been here, for those who are regulars, I folks, my folks, people where you are.
Yes, regulars, regulars. Regulars. Yours truly.
Thank you very much for keeping on supporting the work that we do.
The other folks. What initiative really seeks to pull together Africa interest across the university?
And our main goal is to make engagement with Africa a strategic priority for Oxford.
And your presence here shows how important that is. So thank you so much for coming.
You're not here to hear me speak, so allow me to introduce our speakers for today.
Every Sucka special to today is super special. We have a speaker from the other place, but our first speaker today is one of our own.
Malcolm and Professor Malcolm is really an interesting fellow and we just discovered that he has the skill to be in two places at the same time.
So what you're seeing here is not what you see. Malcolm is an engineer, is an associate professor in engineering and science.
He's been the head co-director for the Oxford Martin programme on integrating renewable energy.
He does everything from domestic energy in domestic energy sector and so forth, and renewable energy energy for development.
Anything that has energy to it. He's probably involved in it.
Most importantly, he's going to be the guy who will save us from energy bills because he's doing something in Oxford,
and I'm hoping he will touch a little bit on that. So with the very hot to are folks welcome, please, let's welcome back.
Let's see if we can get the technology working, the.
Here you go, Ray Rice.
Welcome, everybody. This is a first for me in a number of ways.
One is that the first time I'm actually trying to be deliberately provocative and for myself, which is not my usual staff.
And secondly, I'm talking about stuff I'm not gonna work on yet.
So which is kind of unusual. But what I'm trying to do is actually on a very far, very, very hard question.
Yes, I was thinking about it that I had not come to the final conclusions yet.
So this is kind of like a work in progress.
And I thought, actually, there might be some really interesting conversations report from you guys as well to see, Okay,
there's a there might be a rounded way of looking at this question, and the provocative question I'm asking is, is energy bad for Africa?
Now, normally that's a topic that the Nobel talked about today because of course, energy got to be good for Africa, OK?
But yes, the but there's a lot of evidence that we like to ignore.
There's actually things might not be so great. So what I wanted to do was the first one called Gates to say, Let's have a look.
It's very broad, sketchy outline of what some of the issues might be.
Then to say, I'm going to take a course in Tanzania parable to help us relook at the problem.
They don't want to relook and say, OK, maybe there's a different way of approaching the problems and we might get our way out of it.
OK, those of you have been in my thoughts as well know that this is never just the talk about me.
You guys get involved as well.
So this is no different, but you've got you going to use 30 seconds of my precious time talking about the person next to you to say,
what is the biggest challenge that's putting Africa from flattery to loving Africa should flourish.
What are the biggest challenges? You've got 30 seconds talking to each other. Go introduce yourself and talk.
Right. The. OK.
I'm hoping that one of the things you didn't say, OK, I hope, was that you did not say is that the people are very unfriendly in Africa.
You. Walked through the think? Yeah. Okay, right.
So some of you may have said some thoughts about it, and hopefully that is perhaps the ultimate way of thinking about where I'm coming from.
I guess I don't fall behind that, and what I do is decide who's come out of the macroeconomic dialogue.
Just remember, I'm a stupid engineer and just remember that.
So I'm going to be talking about economics a little bit, but it's just to kind of it.
It's all thinking about the issues. So what are the results said?
Okay, I knew that if I did this talk about a month ago in my mind, but really from the bottom would be done.
So what are the is that sporadically over the way I was looking at the Financial Times and just picking up any article about Africa and energy?
OK. So just to start with, you give a little support that there are some people up on the hill, you know, softer than bullish on oil prospects.
Sounds brilliant. Yeah. Okay. This is one of the some of the little details yet reduced oil revenues and energy management both on the border,
but particularly the that fell by 80 percent hold on eighty five percent in one year.
Why? Because of the oil price falling and what happened to protest and some serious challenges.
So this is a good news story, but underneath it, actually this the spot at the point of all of this.
And if you're sitting in here, what's going on? OK, so that's that's the Gulf oil.
One example to some of you may come across in Algeria and you know the that happened here.
So that was West Africa. This is a part of East Africa. This is kind of North Africa.
If you haven't done here, we go to the wrong place.
But then she points out new economic elites have grown rich of infrastructure projects funded by petrodollars.
Do you call them for corruption? Where's the funding from energy?
Is that a great thing for Africa? I'm not sure. OK?
And is my favourite one, and I have to declare an interest in this one.
I was most likely to be quite modest as the South African power company because they lost four point sixty four point eight billion dollars,
bailed out Eskom, the gas and electrical company, electrical utility and supposedly one of the strongest economies in Africa.
And yet the utility is having to be bailed out by four point eight billion dollars.
OK, and some of you might know some of the backstory behind it.
OK. And you can see that Cyril Ramaphosa is trying to sort it out,
and you can realise that it's Cyril Ramaphosa trying to sort it out, not his predecessor.
OK. So curiously, he's actually on a macro level,
and these are not only these are only three articles of the foreign and energy, none of them had a good news story.
OK, thank goodness they're not looking for any book like this is what's going on here.
So that's a macro at the macro level.
I'm going to go with another focussed mainly on this point here that some of the ideas will translate through to other energy systems as well.
But let's just concentrate on the business side. I want to look at more specifics at the micro levels.
We finished off with the utility. I'm going to carry on with the utility side below the liquid effect.
You'll see it. My company bearer of a utility that's in Kenya and undergoing a massive electrification process.
Well, sounds great. OK, except you know, the issue cost them about a thousand dollars per home to electrify.
OK, the average consumption for the homes that are being that you buy after three years is around about 250 kilowatt hours.
To give you a rough idea in the UK, average is about 50 kilowatt hours a day.
OK, there's 50 kilowatt hours and this is four. This is the average consumption tool for the rich people for low cost and low
in the rural areas that goes down to something like 10 kilowatt hours a day.
And if they charge you something, why they'll be earning something like seven or eight per kilowatt hour because they're not buying right?
I got used to the to. What happens is that the infrastructure project is done on bank loans, international bank loans.
They are not. They're not to pay. A couple that actually they're getting sort of a huge debt trap.
And then in serious trouble, and they are also going to go bankrupt, pretty faithful to slavery, OK?
And in fact, it's interesting is that they're all very, very, very few utilities in Africa that are not bankrupt at the moment.
So at the individual company level? Right? OK.
Let's look for some good news and use the benefits.
OK. So what does that say when you're not smoky room?
Why the smoky? Because we're cooking. OK, so because that's a classic.
We have three things that we've all been there done right?
And one of the interesting questions that means that surely electrification will be good for end users.
Well, some of you know the work that's done on Berkeley,
they've been looking at Kenya and I've been talking to guys in Kenya and others, and we corroborate this.
This finding is that I'm looking at electrification benefits to many users across three
different metrics a model of financial uplift because they were they brought electricity.
Secondly was health improvements because he's not having to have that.
And the third one was educational and educational attainment.
And what they do is the amount full price that they look to have in.
I think about 10 different regions in Kenya of people who were off grid and weren't connected in the same.
It will play area. Those who were connected and looked at what the documents are.
Let's talk with financial attainable financial increases.
Statistically, no difference between those who are connected and those who weren't connected of health attainment.
Same story, no matter what's going on here.
Educational attainment negative. OK, hold on.
Let me say that if you it's good for people, what's going on here?
What does that tell you to experience? Well, what I did was this happened. Well, electricity is expensive, so to cook.
We're using a lot of energy. It's very expensive. If you think about your 10 kilowatt hours that you brought in, that's one.
Must you become a millionaire? Yeah. So they run using it for cooking.
And in fact, one of the things I noticed is that we're doing some projects like we saw a y going into the house and smoke Panopto.
Yeah, because I was told to be finished with it because electricity is too expensive for it to to do the cooking.
Second one is if you looked at financial outcomes who thought that giving somebody electricity would turn them into an entrepreneur doesn't.
You need something else to enable people to become entrepreneurial.
And thirdly, increasingly important is I've worked in schools in Africa from when I was quite young,
and I know that when kids want to learn, they will learn. No matter what.
Yeah, it doesn't matter you. They don't know. Like whatever they will,
they have a little call and they will be looking at and they will be doing their best to
learn because we do not really want to learn what happens when you put electricity in.
It is not going to copy where you're going to be. So what are we not going to do?
How about tonight? I wonder just what markets you're listening and I'm on.
Okay, so. So it hasn't all been slow enough. You've can't be saying, Okay, hold on.
No. This is right. So although the education offering might be low, in other words, the quality exams and everything is great,
at least they're being exposed to a wider world and the outlook is changed.
So there's some positive there. And of course,
they get to support their favourite premium football for football because what is the main thing that used in Kenya for TV is premiership football.
Yeah, the soccer is the main thing. So it is a benefit.
Question mark, is that OK?
So yeah, maybe then you can use that.
And this is where I got to about midnight last night as this copyright.
OK, so so it's a wisdom story that I came across many, many years ago and I thought I'd look for a picture from it.
But suddenly discovered that actually, it wasn't for from Africa. I don't know if anybody knows the story.
OK. You. It's about a trip of monkeys were living on the plains, and it's celebrating the rain and the rain and the right.
And what happens is what the rivers flooded their bags and basically the water froze.
But the monkeys were good enough. They could actually climb into the trees and they could get up to the higher ground.
But what they to do that they noticed in the water, these other animals that was probably, you know, that the fish were struggling in the water.
The monkey thought, You know this, this be good guys. And that's what we'll do is we will sweep the fish up and stop them from drowning.
And that's what they did. And that felt really good about themselves to say, Hey, guys, we can skip these fish off.
Put them on on the backs and they we are not saving all the fish.
My worry is, am I one of the monkeys saving the fish from drowning?
Are we all in that category? Question mark.
All in all, when you said this was a good news story. Why is it even news?
What went wrong? I told the person, next, you what went wrong with the story?
You got 10 seconds. Go quick, quick, quick. So.
All right. Of the.
OK, maybe you can hold the same place that I painted, which was what was the mistake of the.
They were saying the fish from the eyes of the monkey knocking on the fish.
So maybe what we should be doing is looking at the problem through the eyes of the fish.
OK, so that means can we relook at things slightly differently? OK, so here's where I get into trouble.
OK? Anybody know who those two people are? If anybody sociologists, anybody economists call us?
OK, so one of them is the founder of Geography. The other one's a prise, a Nobel prise winner in economics.
OK. This guy is Max Faber. Oh, OK.
Anybody other than a favour? Yeah, OK. And this is how this law is used for positive economics and why one of these two guys are
the reason I these two guys off is because it's not because they are white males like me,
but rather because they actually have some fun, interesting things to say.
The first one was that Matt, very good, was working in the state, and he sees the state as a single outcome.
OK, so he sees the state as a single actor, and the primary thing is is that he sees that the state has a monopoly over force.
In other words, the state controls the police and the military.
And what they are doing that is they are using that will not be a force to reduce the amount of violence in the society.
Yeah, because basically, if you think about what are the courts of law and police and all that type of things to do is to
basically make sure that if you wanted to get somebody else's retribution against you by the state,
I guess it's not minimises the whole thing is designed to minimise violence and other things where you the world.
Basically, everybody has access to all institutions,
and this system in the broadest sense of the things basically means anybody can become a lawyer and businessman as long as they've got the capability.
It's not who they know, it's what they know and what the capabilities are.
And that's part of what my when I was until about a month ago.
That's how you do. The whole world was like this, OK?
And you kind of think that. And that's because the fact is, we live in a kind of full us into what we think of what the world is along comes north.
And he says, actually, the Van Dam demonstrates is really, really unusual.
It's an oddity. It's not normality the usual way because you actually have multiple actors, each having access to force.
OK, so for those of you in the UK, you can think about the barriers, you know, each of the variants that are in the warming internet access.
Because if you go to something like inner city London at the moment, you think of the games,
each of those that taxes the police, if you go to something like Africa, you can think of the different tribes.
Each of them had access to that kind of military army.
And looking at that and what he says is that actually what they do is you have an elite who basically control that force in that particular area.
And if I use the UK example, you are the baron he's about, it didn't talk to the army.
I've seen it where you go to Kenya and the guy guys running the charcoal things is that you
got one guy who actually controls a strong man and they control the top called hotspots.
Same, same same principle. OK. And what these guys do is those elites limit access to functions.
OK, so they they provide doors to closed door, just normal people get the access and access things.
How do those doors open? My money because they seek rent to minimise violence.
OK, so what they do is by having access. You then have a mechanism to create money and to make it worth your while to have this whole equal pay.
Because you think about how you pay, you've got to make money.
No, we're why don't to pay for stuff because we have this phrase which was just like, just help to the ground, he said.
In these societies, you need to have rent seeking in order to minimise violence.
Remember my very first logical? What happened?
We said that we lost the money. What happened? Violence. We lost the ability to see create violence.
And. OK, so this was going.
OK, so so now this is actually in the world we working in.
This is something we have the technical now. Let me just say this is not just an African problem.
You've got to look through the thought look through the empty.
Today, there were five articles of Western companies and cultures exhibiting this type of behaviour.
It's not just an African problem, it's it's. And remember, Noel said, this is the normal sector.
So given that that's that's we've got to think things on the macro side, we've got to rethink whatever we do.
We got to make sure we rub along with this and not make it worse.
But if we can stop this, if we stop the rent Typekit taking it, potentially increasing violence now, that's an interesting and hard question.
I haven't resolved that one yet. Oops. The wrong way. We were micro-level.
This is what we think of as water utilities, and that's basically one of the largest new coal stations being built in South Africa.
But I can say the equivalent London, and this could be the STEVE here, basically very large projects in order to do large scale energy.
The reason we do that is because we think this is what they used to look like.
Yeah, that we need lots of energy, all the fastest. And this is if you think about the way the energy infrastructure has been designed in Africa,
it's got this model behind this large scale infrastructure to do large-scale industry.
And that's not necessarily true. So how do we think things through?
So I think it's to say that what we're going to do is going to sit back from those models and rethink things a little more carefully.
So my conclusion to this is actually six questions.
OK, first question. That's more like the use that we should be thinking about.
This is actually a community development.
And the key thing is we should be working with the community to understand what does university if those benefits all?
And how do we design a system to meet those benefits, not the benefits of what we thought earlier on.
The second question is to say energy is only part of the solution.
Remember a set of art? You don't become entrepreneur without it just because you put an energy system.
So the solution is we'll put some training schemes around that.
So you create entrepreneurs alongside that or you create better farming
techniques so you create ways of actually doing your distribution of your goods.
You've got to think about this not just as an energy thing, having one of the problems that we have,
but I have to say this is funders as well as for the practitioners, is we tend to think about silos.
So how many times have gone up to particularly areas and you find this is about education?
And then then you go to another committee, had one of our energy. No one is about water.
Never in the same place. Because if we don't, the joined up thinking into that.
Actually, it's a whole problem we need to be solving simultaneously.
But the good news is to say, actually, because of things like solar technology, this is my power station now cost me up to $7000 to make.
OK. It's still high, but it's not the billion dollars that the other one is costing.
OK. So because of the way says technologies improving economies, that capital is becoming less of a barrier to entry to create an energy system.
So how does that allow us to rethink things through and specifically goes on to the next questions to say,
Well, look, the role of a utility anyway doesn't need to be a big scale thing.
Can it be a community interest group? For me, the best utility dinosaur was when I was working in BP, in northern Uganda, in the refugee camp.
They were a group of five guys with a lot on solar panel, a battery, and they had created an invisibility, a music centre, a game centre.
And for the women, I had lot.
With one panel. So you can decide, actually, maybe utility is more than just a scintilla of utility, it's providing a range of goods.
So you've got to rethink about what do we mean by. And then the next question is to say,
how do we think of two government structures because government structures are often the way that we ensure we can see great.
And that's, I think, what regulators under a Bavarian state regulators of that to ensure that users on mistreated prison,
an audience site, they basically there as a way of accessing right.
It becomes not anybody know what this is to soccer.
And actually a community, that governance mechanism might be the way that we go to think about, for instance,
to say, how do we actually work with alongside African cultures, to say, how do we actually do things?
And the last piece is to say, maybe what you should be looking at is a way of having a much more distributed energy system.
So it's much harder to gain large amounts of rent, actually small amount of retyping along the way.
It's probably good for things, good for people because it allows for build-up of capital is actually wasted.
I'm convinced it's controversial, but anyway, so in the end, it's maybe the way we view energy for Africa is that energy itself.
And that's my conclusion. Thank you very much, Robert.