The crippling effect on sub-Saharan Africa was recently on display in Nigeria, which overtook South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy last year.
Nigeria’s electrical grid churns out so little power that the country mostly runs on private generators. So when a fuel shortage struck this spring, a national crisis quickly followed, disrupting cellphone service, temporarily closing bank branches and grounding airplanes.
The power shortages and blackouts have cast a harsh light on elected officials, causing rising anger among voters for whom reliable electricity was supposed to be a dividend of democracy and economic growth.
Experts say that the appointment of politically connected officials with little industry expertise at the South African state utility, Eskom, has led to mismanagement just as it has at other state-owned enterprises.
“It’s not only a symbol of failure when the lights go off,” said Anton Eberhard, an energy expert and a professor of management at the University of Cape Town. “It’s experienced directly by people. If you’re about to cook or if your child is studying for an exam the next day and your lights go off, people feel this very directly. There is a very concrete and dramatic expression of failure.”