The East African Power Pool (EAPP) aims to increase its renewable energy mix after being receiving a sh200-million grant from USAID. The EAPP members – including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sudan – will use part of the USAID grant to finance research into renewable energy sources with the organization saying that it will support the newly created power pool to increase its “capacity to exploit clean and renewable energy resources.”
The two-year grant will also facilitate at least three bilateral electricity trading agreements and develop cross-border protocols for rural electrification. The challenge faced by EAPP is that there are currently no existing power lines across the region. Kenya and Uganda have been interconnected since the Owen Falls dam was built in 1952; however, more projects are in the pipeline to get the EAPP connected to the SAPP which would tie a major part of Africa together (African Power Pools Still Need Work).
EAPP had secured sh320 million from the European Union in order to drive the power pool’s permanent secretariat’s position and strengthen cross-border energy ties. However, EAPP member states faced a hurdle after a dispute erupted over the Nile Basin Initiative and proposed hydropower projects. A 1929 colonial era treaty had given Egypt 87% control over the Nile with the remaining 13% given to Sudan. Ethiopia accused Egypt in April of using stalling techniques in order to delay the regional power scheme aimed at sharing water resources from the Nile River. Mid-May saw four EAPP member states, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda adding Kenya to the mix shortly thereafter, signing the deal with Egypt threatening to block dams and other projects upstream in order to force further negotiations (Egypt Hogs Nile Water Flows).
At the end of June, Sudan announced that it would freeze its membership in the Nile Basin Initiative until negotiations continued on properly allocating the Nile’s waters. Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Kalal Ali Mohamed said to Al-Jazeera, “We [will] freeze [our] activities related to the Nile Basin Initiative until we find a solution to the legal implications.” Egypt began sending lobbyists to Western countries in order to gain support to uphold the water distribution rights of the 1929 pact and the updated 1959 treaty.
Geothermal energy, as a result of the African Rift Valley, is gaining speed. In addition, Rwanda is adding to its energy mix with methane gas from Lake Kivu and cities in the region are using biomass from municipal waste. However, the EAPP mainly relies on hydropower resources and the Nile Basin Initiative will play a major role for the power pool.