To Toss a Coin or Shake a Hand: An Overview of Renewable Energy Interventions and Procurement in selected African Countries

Open and competitive bidding process (toss a coin) promotes transparency, efficiency and cost reduction as compared to direct negotiations (shake a hand). This paper provides an overview of renewable energy interventions in Angola, Algeria, Cote Dvoire, Ghana and Nigeria. Further, best practices in Germany and South Africa are discussed. It was discovered that, apart from South Africa, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa uses direct negotiations and feed-in-tariff which has contributed to high cost of renewables. The study recommends that countries should build tendering capacity, put in place simple but robust tendering process and research to identify their renewable energy potential to procure new renewable energy capacity through open and competitive bidding process.