I Hope that Someone gets my Message in a Bottle

The heading of this post has come about largely because a song of that title by 'born again' music band-The Police, has been ringing in my head all day. I've even had to download the song on to my mp3 player this evening and I've been inflicting its sounds repeatedly on my eardrums.

But before I caught the 'message in a bottle' bug, I read an article in today's Lagos BusinessDay that brought back the memories of an idea that might lead to other concrete answers to Africa's power situation.

In the article, Funmi Omogbenigun of the telecommunications company MTN was reported to have said that they had spent 12billion Naira on Generators and the diesel that fuels them over the last year. Vast amounts you might say, especially if you multiply that by the four Big Telcos in Nigeria. The scale of these sums become more boggling when seen on a continental scale. It is without question that Africa is Mobile Telephony's remaining Klondike Gold Rush territory and the MTNs of this world are jostling for every inch of space.

But back to the idea I spoke of earlier on. A certain Big Brother of mine once suggested and I agreed with him that a good number of Generators in Nigeria did not operate at full capacity. Many generators in homes and companies generate power that ends up not being fully utilised, yet the power situation across Africa remains dismal.

With companies like MTN running mini Power generating 'subsidiaries', isn't it time that we begin to think about ways of harnessing some of this spare capacities and feeding it into the power gird for distribution. In the first instance, distribution could be channeled to the immediate areas surrounding the Generators. An incentive for the companies/ homes who own the generators could be in the form of diesel rebates or direct payments for electricity they generate.

These are just my initial thoughts about a 'half-bread being better than none' solution in the interim before he Bretton Woods + Private Finance Initiative on reducing energy poverty comes to stream.

The song is still singing in my head......

I'll send an SOS to the world,

I'll send an SOS to the world,

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my Message in a bottle!