How to close Africa’s energy access gap
CHIGOZIE AMADI
What will it take to bring electricity to 300 million people in Africa who currently live without it? This is the goal we’ve set for Mission 300—to halve the number of people on the continent without reliable electricity by 2030. But setting a goal is just the spark. We need a full-blown power surge of bold reforms, investments, and an enabling environment for sustainable, scalable, and affordable energy solutions.
This isn’t just an ambitious goal: it’s also one of the greatest opportunities of our time. Powering Africa is key to raising living standards, creating jobs for the millions of youths entering the job market each year, ensuring essential services, empowering women, driving digitalization, and propelling growth. And it’s no wonder that last week in Davos, Africa stood out as the new frontier of growth. But with 2030 fast approaching and amid the continent’s rapid population growth, we must shift from discussion to decisive action and ignite a movement.
Closing the energy access gap is within reach. With the cost of renewable energy falling over the past decade, we are closer than ever. And with Africa in the driver’s seat, this will be indeed possible. But the scale of the challenge requires global collaboration. And that’s exactly the purpose of Mission 300, a new partnership involving governments, the private sector, development banks, and philanthropies, with each stakeholder playing their part to achieve a common goal.
What is needed to make this happen?
First, bold policy reforms to break the cycle of reliance on public subsidies simply to keep the lights on for existing customers. Governments need to advance reforms to make the energy sector more efficient and attractive to private investors. Fundamental to this is transparent and competitive bids for new generation capacity, tariff and subsidy reforms that allow commercial operation while protecting the most vulnerable with affordable connections, and leveraging regional integration for trading power. Governments will also play a significant role in scaling up off-grid renewable energy for remote areas.
Second, matching ambition with funding. Donors and multilateral development banks must mobilize more concessional financing for both on-grid and off-grid electrification and mitigate risks. To achieve Mission 300, we estimate that we will need around $30 billion in public funding and at least $10 billion in private investment. The World Bank Group for its part plans to increase its annual average financing from $3 billion to more than $5 billion per year for energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, in a large part possible due to the recent record replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA).
Third, capacity building. Philanthropies can help derisk projects and build the necessary capacity for their long-term success. The Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and Sustainable Energy for All have announced a technical assistance facility to speed up Mission 300’s work.
The Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this week provides an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on all three fronts. Heads of State, along with energy and finance leaders from both the public and private sectors will convene to demonstrate how public-private collaboration can transform Africa’s energy future. African governments are taking the lead on presenting National Energy Compacts that set out country-specific roadmaps to drive essential energy sector and power utility reforms and attract private investment.
Most importantly, the Summit, hosted by the Government of Tanzania—a country that has expanded the grid to reach nearly 100 percent of villages—with the African Development Bank and the World Bank Group, will drive commitments to support these regional electrification efforts.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, this movement has already begun. For example, Sierra Leone, Chad, Togo, and Liberia recently joined forces to launch Africa’s first multi-country competitive grid-connected solar power tender, cutting costs by over 70 percent and boosting generation capacity by more than 25 percent.
Other countries have already achieved impressive results. Take Rwanda, which has increased its electricity access to 75 percent from 6 percent in 2009, one of the fastest electrification expansions in the world. Or Cameroon, where World Bank Group guarantees and financial investment leveraged over $1 billion from the private sector leading to the completion of the 420 MW Nachtigal hydroelectric power plant last year, increasing the country’s clean, affordable energy capacity by 30 percent.
But much more is needed.
Mission 300 is a call to action. The clock is ticking, and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ignite meaningful change and a more sustainable future. This will not be easy, or it would have been done already, but together, we can speed up and power up Africa and unlock a brighter future for all.
