African power pool interconnections development: a foundation for bridging the digital divide

This abstract attempts to recommend and demonstrate an opportunity for African policy makers to utilize the information density created by the planning of some of these energy development initiatives to integrate with international R&D in the growing field of knowledge management. The South African power pool (SAPP), West African power pool (WAPP) and the initiatives in North Africa with interconnections to the middle east represent vast knowledge domains. These domains range from economic to cultural to historical. Modeling the intent therefore of these initiatives (i.e. a given power plant, series of plants or development projects in a given system) generates technical and societal 'impact' data across academia, industry and other layers of society. Several studies are sited to illustrate the growing importance of 'knowledge management' versus 'knowledge transfer' and the resulting possibilities. In turn the principal studies on African interconnections are sited as foundation candidates toward building these knowledge bases. References from contemporary events such as the Californian energy crisis and projects such as the three Gorges project in China and the Brazilian Hydro experience are also sited for their own internal knowledge experience.