‘A Very Exciting Time’
Bena was fortunate to have had electricity growing up in his hometown of Mbarara in southwestern Uganda. But just a few miles away, his family’s farm wasn’t electrified until 2015 when Uganda’s national grid was expanded to the area.
“We are lucky that access has improved,” he says. “I have relatives who still don’t have electricity.”
Experiencing the benefits of electrification and seeing the limitations of life without it, Bena decided early on to work toward bringing development to rural Uganda.
He studied agricultural engineering at Makere University in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, and earned a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Melbourne in Australia. In 2000, he joined the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development and moved to the REA in 2008.
“My whole career, I knew I wanted to help bring electricity to the Ugandan people,” Bena says. “With the progress we’ve made, it’s a very exciting time.”
But even with the best plans in hand, the hurdles working in impoverished areas of sub-Saharan Africa can be daunting.
“Affordability and ability for consumers to pay for electricity is a big challenge,” Bena says. “But it is most important for them to pay for connections. We must make the business of electrification financially viable.”
He says limited government resources and rural Uganda’s geography and settlement patterns are also impediments, but NRECA’s use of geographic information systems (GIS) in their planning is a major step toward solving the puzzle of connecting Uganda’s rural communities. Using the platform, they are able to analyze which unconnected areas can be most easily linked to the existing grid and which communities will need local generation infrastructure.
“NRECA’s GIS platform will provide us with the data we need to help us understand better where the rural populations are,” he says. “With this, we can map out the whole country and conduct economic analyses to help us make the investments to expand access.”
Tempered Optimism
“I’m not doing this alone,” Bena frequently notes when discussing rural electrification efforts.
He lavishes credit on Uganda’s top officials as well as his REA co-workers and other leaders, not only in Kampala but in the states and villages as well.
But like most people who have worked to bring systemic improvements to impoverished nations, Bena tempers his optimism.
“My hope and dream is for electricity access to increase, everyone to have electricity in their houses, and for their lives to improve,” he says. “But we must be willing to use different approaches to achieve our electrification goals. We should also take advantage of the changes and advances in technology, and we should do it rationally.”