Yemisi Izuora
Cummins Inc. a US engine and power generator maker says it is looking at providing electricity to about 300 million people in Africa.
The growing gap between demand and supply for power will spur orders for the company’s product, said Thierry Pimi, vice president of Cummins International Distribution Business.
The Middle East and Africa accounted for 2 per cent of the Columbus, Indiana-based company’s revenue of $34.1 billion in 2023 which is targeting revenue of $42 billion to $45 billion by the end of the decade.
While sub-Saharan Africa is home to six of the top-10 fastest-growing economies in the world, it also accounts for about 85 per cent of the world’s population without electricity.
Cummins expects efforts to bring power to millions of unconnected people, expansion in extractive industries and the ongoing maturity of key economies that support gross domestic product growth and wealth creation to drive demand for its goods and services.
“In Africa, we play at the heart of the major economic drivers of growth,” Pimi said in an interview in Bloomberg’s Johannesburg office on Tuesday. “Most African economies are extractive economies and Africa is probably the largest and only frontier market where the energy gap is still growing until 2035.”
The World Bank and the African Development Bank have come up with a plan to provide electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030. The institutions have pledged $30 billion to the project, dubbed Mission 300.
Cummins, whose industrial diesel and natural gas engines and generators are used in mining and oil and gas production, as well as data centers and hospitals, operates its regional head offices out of South Africa and employs about 1,500 people across the continent, Pimi said.
Its biggest regional markets by value are currently South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Ghana, he said.