REA renews AI partnership with German firm to boost rural electrification

The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has renewed its partnership with German artificial intelligence and data analytics company, VIDA place GmbH, to strengthen data-driven electricity planning and accelerate Nigeria’s quest for universal electricity access.

The one-year partnership renewal was signed Wednesday in Abuja during the visit of Germany’s Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Johann Wadephul.

Speaking after the signing, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of REA, Dr Abba Aliyu, said the collaboration would enable the agency to deploy public funds more efficiently in providing electricity to underserved communities.

Aliyu stated that Nigeria’s electrification drive requires accurate data to identify communities without electricity and determine the least-cost approach to connecting them.

He said: “Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of people without electricity, and we have secured a $750m World Bank-funded programme to electrify 17.5 million Nigerians.

“We do not want to just take this funding and start electrifying communities. We need data. We need a plan that tells us where these Nigerians without electricity are, the number of households in those communities and the least-cost option for providing electricity.”

He said VIDA developed an artificial intelligence-powered platform that mapped communities across the country, providing information on household numbers, socio-economic indicators and electrification status.

“The essence of the partnership is to ensure that public funds are deployed in the most economically efficient manner. Artificial intelligence has saved us the cost and time of physically visiting communities to gather this information,” he added.

Aliyu noted that the platform has also improved transparency in subsidy allocation under the World Bank-funded Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up programme and has attracted interest from other African countries seeking to adopt similar models.