Industrial engines offer fixed assets: some of the static engines at work in Africa's sugar factories today were first installed under colonial rule. Now, the most modern designs of gas turbine are being put in to distribute fuels within the ECOWAS region.(Power Supply)

INSIDE MOST FACTORIES and ports in Africa there is some kind of bolted-down industrial engine that produces mechanical motion (usually a rotating shaft) to operate machinery completely independent of the electrical power supply. Most common by far is the diesel used to power a conventional engine generator set. But there are many other types to be found, and the fact they are static widens the range of possibilities and applications. The irrigation pump is a good familiar example.

All these industrial engines convert the energy contained within a fuel such as diesel oil, coal or even agricultural waste into useful work. This is usually by means of internal combustion (as in a reciprocating piston engine such as a diesel), or external combustion as in an old-style steam engine. In various forms there are still many of the latter at work in Africa, and in much more efficient turbine …