Energy Resources of Southern Africa: Potentialsand Sustainable Energy Delivery

Abstract

Energy resources constitute a substantial part of natural resources of many nations. The energy resources confer advantages on the resource nations as they provide the base for energydevelopment, support economic development and provide export commodities. Southern Africa hassome fossil fuel resources of natural oil, natural gas, and coal. It also has uranium deposits fornuclear energy development. With the global attention shifting to renewable and cleaner energysources, it is advantageous that Southern Africa is also endowed with renewable energy resources.The advantage of its position relative to the Equator, the vast land that accommodates high windspeed, the vast tropical forest that yields bio-energy resources and coastlines that permit access tothe ocean for off-shore wind energy and ocean energy, provide the renewable energy resources tohelp in achieving universal access. The objectives of the study are to profile the non-renewableenergy resources of the Southern Africa subregion, understand the potentials of the renewableenergy resources and draw implications of the energy resources for energy delivery in the SouthernAfrica subregion. The paper notes that while non-renewable energy resources are confined to a fewcountries, all the countries have advantages of renewable energy resources with adequatedistribution of wind and solar energy resources. The paper also notes that clean non-renewableresources of natural gas and uranium can be adequately combined with the renewable energyresources to harvest the advantages of the two groups of energy resources for achieving the twingoals of universal energy access and green energy development.