I dined not too long ago with Joe, a Nigerian who manages a 400-hectare rice farm within the north of his nation. Nigeria imports about 2.4 million metric tons of rice yearly, based on the U.S. Division of Agriculture. Farmers like Joe are serving to to maneuver his nation of 237 million individuals towards self-sufficiency in rice.
However farmer Joe has a handicap. “For me, the facility grid is a fiction,” he says. “I don’t get any electrical energy from the grid, and I by no means will.”
5 years in the past, Joe put in photo voltaic panels to energy his farm’s irrigation system, which pulls water from a close-by river. His milling and bagging machines, in the meantime, nonetheless run on diesel mills. When Nigeria ended its fuel subsidy in 2023, Joe’s gasoline prices soared, decreasing the cash he can spend money on extra land and different enhancements.
What’s holding again Africa’s electrification?
Joe’s predicament just isn’t distinctive. In sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million individuals—about 53 %—nonetheless have no access to electricity. Even this grim statistic understates the issue, as a result of “entry” can imply simply sufficient wattage to light up a couple of LED lightbulbs among the time. It’s not what Western Europeans or North People would contemplate electrical energy.
And traditional power grids in sub-Saharan Africa are hampered by poor reliability and frequent outages. Even when provided electrical energy, many purchasers can’t afford to pay, and so theft of service is endemic. The place grids do exist, “they’re outdated, unstable, and lack buyer connections,” the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported in 2023.
“I’m a bit uninterested in imprecise measures of entry if that entry doesn’t translate into the potential for substantial enhancements and will increase in consumption,” says Christopher D. Gore, a professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, who research electrical energy utilization within the area. “Our newest analysis reveals that [sub-Saharan] households are completely happy to have any electrical gentle however stay dissatisfied with the minimal provide, the value, and the standard of each grid and solar energy.”
The electrical energy deficit could be worsening. In a 2024 report on universal energy access in Africa, researchers from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, in Washington, D.C., concluded that “demand is considerably outstripping provide, and the vitality disaster is deepening.”
To deal with this dire scarcity, the World Bank and the African Development Bank introduced an initiative final 12 months known as Mission 300, to carry electrical energy to 300 million individuals in sub-Saharan Africa—about half the quantity who lack entry now—by 2030. Such a speedy enlargement means bringing electrical energy to an extra 4.2 million individuals each month on common.
Whereas believable, the enlargement faces headwinds, most notably from the sub-Saharan’s web inhabitants acquire of about 2.5 million individuals per 30 days. If that inhabitants development continues for all six years of the initiative, there will probably be an extra 180 million individuals requiring electrical energy entry.
“The problem is massive. Africa’s inhabitants is projected to double by 2050,” says Barry MacColl, a senior regional supervisor on the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), who covers Africa from Johannesburg. “Increasing nationwide grids might be costly and gradual, particularly in rural and distant areas, the place a lot of the unelectrified individuals stay.” For instance, South Africa’s fundamental utility, Eskom Holdings, estimates it might want to spend 390 billion rand (US $22 billion) over the following decade to increase and improve its growing old energy grid and forestall future blackouts.
Giant variations in electrical energy entry persist amongst and inside African nations. Based on a 2020 report from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, within the East, West, and Southern African areas, about half the individuals have entry to electrical energy, however the proportion falls to a mere 30 % in Central Africa, the place practically 100 million of us haven’t any electrical energy entry. And according to the World Bank, about 82 % of city residents had electrical energy entry in 2023, however solely 33 % in rural areas. (The North African nations aren’t a part of the sub-Saharan area, and, apart from Libya, have electrification charges of one hundred pc.)
Off-grid photo voltaic’s untapped potential in Africa
Fossil fuels nonetheless play an enormous position in Africa’s energy era. Pure fuel is the one largest supply of electrical energy era, whereas coal is important solely in South Africa. Collectively, they account for roughly two-thirds of the continent’s electrical energy manufacturing, based on BloombergNEF. Whereas new gas-fired vegetation proceed to be constructed, the development is shifting towards renewable vitality sources.
An electronics store in Kenya sells photo voltaic panels. Off-grid photo voltaic has been an enormous a part of the nation’s profitable push to extend electrical energy entry.James Wakibia/SOPA Pictures/LightRocket/Getty Pictures
Small-scale off-grid applied sciences, particularly solar energy, are extensively considered because the strongest path to increasing electrical energy entry to rural communities and underserved city areas. UNCTAD estimates that Africa has 60 % of the world’s finest international photo voltaic sources. That interprets to a photo voltaic potential of over 10 terawatts. “Off-grid photo voltaic and storage is taking off in an enormous approach,” says Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council in London. “There are already about 600 million individuals, nearly all in sub-Saharan Africa, who use off-grid photo voltaic and storage not less than as soon as per week.” Dunlop expects to see a 40 % improve in photo voltaic installations subsequent 12 months within the area.
Off-grid solar energy lends itself to bottom-up bootstrapping in rural areas by communities, small farms, companies, and residential prospects. To make the expertise extra inexpensive, the enlargement of microfinancing will probably be key, as Mwoya Byaro and Nanzia Florent Mmbaga level out in a 2022 study in Scientific African.
I do know firsthand the distinction off-grid photo voltaic could make. My Nigerian-born spouse and I personal a walled compound of three properties in southern Nigeria, the place members of her household stay. We not too long ago put in photo voltaic lights atop 5-meter-tall poles. They now illuminate communal areas that have been previously darkish at evening. The compound and the neighborhood aren’t related to the grid, although, so for indoor electrical energy, our family nonetheless depend on diesel mills.
The way forward for hydropower in sub-Saharan Africa
Whereas off-grid photo voltaic may carry electrical energy to hundreds of thousands of individuals, hydropower is “Africa’s renewable-electricity powerhouse, largely due to wonderful sources within the East and Central areas of the continent,” BloombergNEF reported in 2024. Six nations, led by Ethiopia, get most of their electrical energy from hydropower.
Engineers monitor the Kariba Dam, on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. Hydropower may play an enormous position in increasing electrical energy entry in sub-Saharan Africa, however development is pricey and altering rainfall patterns are making hydropower output unpredictable. The Washington Publish/Getty Pictures
“The hydro area is a large development space goal,” says MacColl of EPRI. As with photo voltaic, Africa makes use of solely a small fraction of its hydropower potential. Mini hydropower dams from 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt are essential for distant and small communities of round 50 to 500 properties, MacColl says. Giant dams are below development or have been not too long ago accomplished in Angola, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zambia.
However establishing hydropower dams is expensive and carries the chance of corruption and mismanagement that comes with huge tasks, in addition to the price of connecting a brand new energy supply to the facility grid. For example, Nigeria’s $5.8 billion, 3,050-MW Mambilla dam, which is able to develop into the most important supply of electrical energy within the nation, has been within the starting stage for over 40 years, and completion isn’t anticipated earlier than 2030. Climate change’s impact on rainfall and temperature can be upending estimates of how a lot electrical energy hydropower dams throughout the area can produce.
Might nuclear energy assist electrify Africa?
Even nuclear energy could play a job in closing Africa’s electrical energy hole. The African Energy Chamber, an business group based mostly in Johannesburg, notes in its 2025 Outlook Report that “a major variety of nations in Africa are contemplating embarking on nuclear energy programmes.”
At the moment, solely South Africa has nuclear energy. However Ghana, which runs a research reactor, is planning its first nuclear energy plant with help from China, Japan, and the US. Uganda has chosen a website for its first reactors, as has Kenya. And the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority says it has signed technical agreements on nuclear energy with France, India, Russia, and South Korea. However in all these instances, producing electrical energy from nuclear energy is not less than a decade away, based on the World Nuclear Affiliation.
Kenya’s electrification success story
Finally, elevated entry to electrical energy in sub-Saharan Africa will come from a wide range of sources. One success story is Kenya, the place off-grid electrical energy, primarily from photo voltaic, is complementing expanded grid entry. The federal government’s Last Mile Connectivity Project goals to increase the grid to an extra 280,000 residences, 30,000 companies, and well being facilities and colleges in all 47 counties, based on the African Improvement Financial institution, which helped fund the trouble. Beforehand, the nationwide utility, Kenya Energy, succeeded in growing the variety of grid-connected households within the poorest urban areas from 3,000 to 150,000. Kenya additionally has the most important wind farm in Africa, the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project. The 310-MW plant’s 365 generators account for about 15 % of Kenya’s put in electrical energy capability.
These sustained efforts doubled Kenya’s electrification access rate between 2013 and 2023 to 79 %. Kenya Energy now goals to attain universal electricity access by 2030.
In the meantime, in Nigeria, probably the most populous sub-Saharan nation, the outlook for electrical energy entry is cloudier. Joe, the Nigerian rice farmer, is contemplating putting in extra photo voltaic on his farm, to increase his mill. With extra electrical energy, he says, “we are able to develop extra rice, and mill and bag extra for our individuals.” If the facility grid gained’t—or can’t—come to him, not less than he has the means to generate his personal electrical energy to satisfy his personal wants.
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