Uganda and hydropower

Official Name: Republic of Uganda.

Summary: Uganda, a country of about 25.2 million people, according to 2024 estimates, has among the lowest per-capita energy consumption rates in the world.

The history of energy in modern Uganda reveals the grave paradox of a country with great energy potential yet inadequate development and infrastructure; the people are among the lowest global energy users. The nation’s massive hydropower potential remains largely untapped, and its oil and gas potential has never been fully investigated.

The exploration of Uganda’s energy potential dates back to 1925, when E. J. Wayland documented the possibility of petroleum reserves. As Reuben Kashambuzi and Frank Mugisha demonstrated, this pioneering effort led to further scientific inquiries into the country’s petroleum potential. For example, between 1936 and 1940, a South African company, the African-European Investment Company, reported the availability of oil reserves after the drilling of several shallow wells in the Semliki Basin and Buitaba Port. The Ugandan government also drilled 10 shallow wells (394 to 1,968 feet deep) for geological exploration, with no indication of hydrocarbons, between 1948 and 1951. These early efforts received a great boost with the discovery of gas in Tanzania in 1977 and oil in Sudan in 1979.

The 1980s and 1990s provided mammoth opportunities for the exploration of energy potential, given renewed efforts by the government with the enactment of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act of 1985. This piece of legislation was complemented by the establishment of the Petroleum Exploration Promotion Project with the support of the World Bank in the same year. From 1986 to 1987, the first set of indigenous geoscientists was sent to the United Kingdom for specialized courses in petroleum-related studies, and the stage was set for a deeper and broader foreign interest in the Ugandan energy sector.

Several multinational oil corporations have explored for oil in Uganda. According to one report, a consortium of four oil companies—Shell, ExxonMobil, Petrofina, and Total—became interested in the prospect of oil in Uganda beginning in 1989. In 1990, the Agreement of Cooperation for Joint Exploration and Exploitation of Common Fields Between Uganda and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was signed, and by 1997,1997, Heritage Oil had been awarded a license to investigate Exploration Area 3 inthe Semliki the Semliki Basin in western Uganda. The company acquired the first seismic data, which offered excellent information about the prospects for drillable oil. By the early 2000s, as a result of earlier discoveries and pressure from rising international oil prices, Uganda was engrossed in seeking internal oil reserves. This effort seemed to yield positive results when Heritage Oil announced the first exploratory well in the Semliki Basin in 2002.

According to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this development heightened the hope of confirming the earlier seismic studies, which had shown 1.2 billion barrels of oil in the basin. It was also reported that oil sands were discovered in Waranga and Mputa in 2006 by Hardman Resources of Australia. In 2007, Heritage Oil and its partner, Tullow Oil of London, expanded their prospecting into the Albertine Basin with great hopes of discovering an estimated 2.4 billion barrels. In 2021, it was estimated that Uganda had crude oil reserves totaling 2.5 billion barrels.

Energy Production and Consumption

Since the 1980s, biomass (charcoal, wood, and agricultural residues) has been meeting between 90 and 95 percent of Uganda’s energy needs. Modern life and a quest for economic development have made it imperative for the government to seek and exploit other sources of energy, especially Uganda’s potential hydropower and petroleum resources.

This effort is slowly yielding the desired result. Whereas electricity from renewables met 32.36 percent of electricity needs in 2020, fossil fuels accounted for about 1 percent of generation capacity in 2022.

The installed generating capacity of the power system in Uganda totaled 2.463 million kilowatts in 2022, while consumption that year was 3.971 billion kilowatt-hours. Only 47 percent of the population had access to electricity in 2022, but demand for power is growing rapidly. In a bid to ensure equity in power distribution, the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB), the state utility responsible for generating and supplying electricity, has often resorted to load shedding, defined by Mugadu as “a technique for rationing the little power available among the ever-increasing power needs of electricity consumers.” In 2022, 72 percent of residents in urban areas had access to electricity, while only about 35 percent of people in rural areas had access.

The energy crisis in Uganda was long compounded by the minimal success in oil and gas exploration. That began to change, however, as more oil was discovered in the country. In 2023, drilling began at the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields. It was estimated that these two operations would produce about 1.4 billion barrels by 2025. With this in mind, Uganda moved forward with the expectation that oil would become a major part of its economic and energy future.

Management of Energy Challenges

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) in Kampala owns the main energy mandate in Uganda, which, according to its website, is “to establish, promote the development, strategically manage and safeguard the rational and sustainable exploitation and utilization of energy and mineral resources for social and economic development.” The ministry is organized into five main departments: the Department of Energy Resources, the Department of Geological Survey and Mines, the Department of Petroleum Exploration and Production, the Department of Petroleum Supplies, and the Department of Support Services Administration.

In a bid to expand energy opportunities in Uganda, the MEMD, with the support of the World Bank, embarked on the Power Sector Development Operation Project in 2007. The primary objectives of the project were to reduce short-term power shortages and financial imbalances and facilitate orderly, long-term expansion of the electricity service. In order to achieve these objectives, the program comprised a set of investment and policy measures designed to reduce the supply-demand gap until the Bujagali Hydroelectric Power Station came into service in 2012 with financial support for the government to absorb a part of the grid. Nonetheless, a power station is slated to be built at Karuma Falls with a capacity in the vicinity of 600 megawatts. It was still under construction in 2024.

Closely related to the MEMD is the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB), which is in charge of the generation and supply of electricity. The UEB has a dominant market position in electricity generation.

Interestingly, Uganda happens to be one of the few countries in Africa where a nongovernmental organization (NGO) is involved in ensuring equitable energy generation and distribution. The East African Energy Technology Development Network-Uganda (EAEDTN-U) advocates for appropriate energy technology development through technology promotion and utilization. EAEDTN-U seeks to improve the quality of life for poor households in East Africa by increasing their access to appropriate energy technology options and promoting income-generating activities geared toward the economic empowerment of women and men.

EAEDTN-U is also working to enhance the capacity for productive use of energy and energy technologies for commercial purposes. The EAETDN-U is additionally involved in the areas of capacity building, technology transfer, information sharing, and networking. According to its website, this NGO has succeeded in establishing a networking mechanism for organizations and individuals working in energy-related fields; building the capacity of NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs) for working with, disseminating, and utilizing alternative energy technologies (in the districts of Kalangala, Busia, Kayunga, Luwero, Sironko, and Bushenyi); integrating concerns about poverty reduction and gender equality into the national energy policy during its formulation stage; and conducting a feasibility study for microhydropower at three sites in Uganda (addressing design and handling of the engineering structures, hydrologic and geologic field studies, technical specifications, turbine and generator manufacture, procurement of control equipment, and construction of the hydraulic structures and the grid lines planned for and being implemented in the Sironko district).

Despite all these efforts, energy generation and supply are still below the required levels. Therefore, the government must do more to meet energy demand. Uganda’s energy scenario calls for more creative and comprehensive plans for alternative energy sources. The government clearly cannot bear total responsibility for meeting the nation’s energy needs but needs to form public-private partnership (PPP) ventures. Aside from the country’s hydropower potential, alternative sources such as solar, nuclear, and especially geothermal power should be researched and incorporated into Uganda’s energy plan. As Mugadu has correctly noted, geothermal energy represents a high-priority alternative to hydropower; therefore, the findings and recommendations from the geothermal project initiated by the government must be properly infused into the energy master plan. In addition, discoveries related to Uganda's oil reserves drove interest in making fossil fuels a bigger part of the country's energy picture.

Bibliography

Kisambira, Edris. “More Oil, Gas Found.” East African Business Week, July 16, 2007.

Rose, John, and Brian Smith. “Hydrocarbon Potential of the Albertine Graben.” Oil and Gas Journal, June 2002.

"Uganda." CIA World Factbook, 7 Aug. 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/uganda/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.

"Uganda." International Energy Agency, 2024, www.iea.org/countries/uganda. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.