How market failures are holding Africa back

GHANA HAS a curious problem: it produces too much electricity. Under the terms of opaque contracts with generating companies, the government has been paying over $500m a year for power that is never used. That is odd, because the country is hardly awash with energy. The average Ghanaian uses as much electricity in a year as an American does in a fortnight. Although access has expanded rapidly, more than a quarter of rural households are not connected to the grid.The biggest obstacle to economic development is often inadequate resources. But not always. In Ghana, generating power has proved much easier than distributing it. So, too, in several east African countries, including Uganda, where installed capacity is nearly double peak demand—and your correspondent sits writing this in a blackout. Electricity is not the only industry where resources are sometimes plentiful, and needs are obvious, but demand does not join up with supply. Call it the paradox of untapped riches: surplus and shortage, existing side by side.