SIEMENS

The morning quiet is broken, warm sunshine embraces the wooded mountains, and barefoot children collect firewood between wooden huts. Uganda’s national anthem, “Oh Uganda, Land of Beauty,” is no exaggeration within the natural beauty surrounding Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano that straddles the Ugandan-Kenyan border. But when night falls, the beauty is covered by deep darkness. The reason: Africa’s “green pearl” is suffering from a severe power shortage.

According to Uganda’s National Environment Management Authority, more than 90 percent of the country’s population does not have access to electricity. The present peak demand is approximately 400 megawatts (MW). Canada, with a population almost the same size as that of Uganda, has a peak demand that’s 250 times higher. Uganda depends on hydroelectricity for more than three quarters of its total power generation. This created serious problems in 2006 when water levels in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake, reached their lowest level in 50 years. This not only threatened fishermen, but also severely affected Uganda’s industry.

Power from Sugar Cane. Given these circumstances, the Ugandan government developed an energy strategy including biomass-based co-generation plants that could simultaneously generate electricity as well as heat for manufacturing processes. The Kakira Sugar Works (KSW), Uganda’s leading sugar company, is an example of such a project. KSW is located 15 kilometers from Jinja, a town of approximately 90,000 on the shores of Lake Victoria. ”KSW was crushing 3,500 tons of sugar cane per day (TCD), but wanted to expand to 6,000 TCD,” says Rani Sodhi, a project manager from Siemens India. To meet this goal, cane residue left after crushing, known as bagasse, would have to be burned in boilers, producing high-pressure steam that could be used to drive the factory’s cane mills and produce electric power.

“To achieve this, we worked with experts from Siemens India and Kenya,” says GanesonSundararaman, an electrical engineering manager at KSW. “We had great confidence in the strength of Indian project management because of similar projects executed by Siemens India at home. In many ways it’s easier for us to partner with those who have faced similar challenges. Countries with comparable development patterns understand our issues and inspire us. Take India — 30 years ago it was an agricultural economy, but for the past two decades it has experienced double-digit annual growth.”

Not surprisingly, India has become a major player in Africa. At the 2011 India-Africa Summit, the Indian government announced several new initiatives, including a program to grant scholarships to 22,000 African students, efforts to promote Africa’s infrastructure development, and plans to invest $700 million to build institutions such as the India-Africa Institute of Information Technology in Ghana.

All of this is a vivid example of south-south cooperation (SSC), a term that was first promoted in the 1960s, when a group of 77 developing countries formed a loose coalition to pursue joint economic interests and increase the group’s collective political influence. Today SSC is a colorful mosaic of instruments including debt relief and trade agreements as well as the exchange of know-how.

The “Kakira partnership” combined the expertise of Siemens teams from India and Kenya. “Our aim was to design the whole co-generation project and supervise the project’s execution,” says Sodhi. “Siemens Kenya was mainly in charge of the installation of the power plant and on-site coordination. Five team members from India frequently traveled to Kakira and were in constant contact with our colleagues in Kenya.” The co-generation plant has helped KSW to become self-sufficient and to feed 14 MW into Uganda’s national grid through a newly constructed power line. KSW is now planning to double its capacity to 12,000 TCD and increase its grid electricity capacity to 32 MW by July 2012. In addition to these benefits, the Kakira expansion reduces carbon emissions by generating electricity from renewable resources and increases cane cultivation by farmers, thus generating income in remote areas. However you look at it, the Siemens south-south cooperation has been a sweet success — and a model for future joint efforts.