I dined just lately 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, in keeping with the U.S. Division of Agriculture. Farmers like Joe are serving to to maneuver his nation of 237 million folks 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 gasoline subsidy in 2023, Joe’s gasoline prices soared, decreasing the cash he can put money into extra land and different enhancements.
What’s holding again Africa’s electrification?
Joe’s predicament shouldn’t be distinctive. In sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million folks—about 53 p.c—nonetheless have no entry to electrical energy. Even this grim statistic understates the issue, as a result of “entry” can imply simply sufficient wattage to light up a number of LED lightbulbs among the time. It’s not what Western Europeans or North Individuals would contemplate electrical energy.
And conventional energy grids in sub-Saharan Africa are hampered by poor reliability and frequent outages. Even when supplied electrical energy, many shoppers 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 The place grids do exist, “they’re outdated, unstable, and lack buyer connections,” the United Nations Convention on Commerce and Growth (UNCTAD) reported in 2023.
“I’m a bit bored with 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 College, who research electrical energy utilization within the area. “Our newest analysis reveals that [sub-Saharan] households are completely happy to have any electrical mild however stay dissatisfied with the minimal provide, the worth, and the standard of each grid and solar energy.”
The electrical energy deficit might be worsening. In a 2024 report on common vitality entry in Africa, researchers from the Heart for Strategic & Worldwide Research, in Washington, D.C., concluded that “demand is considerably outstripping provide, and the vitality disaster is deepening.”
To handle this dire scarcity, the World Financial institution and the African Growth Financial institution introduced an initiative final 12 months known as Mission 300, to deliver electrical energy to 300 million folks in sub-Saharan Africa—about half the quantity who lack entry now—by 2030. Such a speedy growth means bringing electrical energy to a further 4.2 million folks each month on common.
Whereas believable, the growth faces headwinds, most notably from the sub-Saharan’s web inhabitants achieve of about 2.5 million folks per 30 days. If that inhabitants development continues for all six years of the initiative, there will probably be a further 180 million folks 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 Electrical Energy Analysis Institute (EPRI), who covers Africa from Johannesburg. “Increasing nationwide grids will be costly and gradual, particularly in rural and distant areas, the place a lot of the unelectrified folks dwell.” For instance, South Africa’s predominant utility, Eskom Holdings, estimates it might want to spend 390 billion rand (US $22 billion) over the following decade to develop and improve its growing older energy grid and stop 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 Financial Cooperation and Growth, within the East, West, and Southern African areas, about half the folks have entry to electrical energy, however the share falls to a mere 30 p.c in Central Africa, the place practically 100 million of us don’t have any electrical energy entry. And in keeping with the World Financial institution, about 82 p.c of city residents had electrical energy entry in 2023, however solely 33 p.c in rural areas. (The North African nations aren’t a part of the sub-Saharan area, and, aside from Libya, have electrification charges of 100%.)
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, in keeping with BloombergNEF. Whereas new gas-fired crops 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 Photographs/LightRocket/Getty Photographs
Small-scale off-grid applied sciences, particularly solar energy, are broadly seen because the strongest path to increasing electrical energy entry to rural communities and underserved city areas. UNCTAD estimates that Africa has 60 p.c of the world’s greatest 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 manner,” says Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the International Photo voltaic Council in London. “There are already about 600 million folks, virtually all in sub-Saharan Africa, who use off-grid photo voltaic and storage not less than as soon as every week.” Dunlop expects to see a 40 p.c enhance 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 growth of microfinancing will probably be key, as Mwoya Byaro and Nanzia Florent Mmbaga level out in a 2022 examine 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 dwell. We just lately 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 linked to the grid, although, so for indoor electrical energy, our kin nonetheless depend on diesel mills.
The way forward for hydropower in sub-Saharan Africa
Whereas off-grid photo voltaic may deliver electrical energy to thousands and thousands of individuals, hydropower is “Africa’s renewable-electricity powerhouse, largely because of glorious 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 building is pricey and altering rainfall patterns are making hydropower output unpredictable. The Washington Publish/Getty Photographs
“The hydro house 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 underneath building or have been just lately accomplished in Angola, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zambia.
However establishing hydropower dams is expensive and carries the danger of corruption and mismanagement that comes with massive tasks, in addition to the price of connecting a brand new energy supply to the facility grid. As an illustration, Nigeria’s $5.8 billion, 3,050-MW Mambilla dam, which can change into the most important supply of electrical energy within the nation, has been within the strategy planning stage for over 40 years, and completion isn’t anticipated earlier than 2030. Local weather change’s influence 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 might play a task in closing Africa’s electrical energy hole. The African Vitality 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 present, solely South Africa has nuclear energy. However Ghana, which runs a analysis reactor, is planning its first nuclear energy plant with help from China, Japan, and the USA. Uganda has chosen a web site 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 circumstances, producing electrical energy from nuclear energy is not less than a decade away, in keeping with the World Nuclear Affiliation.
Kenya’s electrification success story
Finally, elevated entry to electrical energy in sub-Saharan Africa will come from quite a lot 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 Final Mile Connectivity Mission goals to increase the grid to a further 280,000 residences, 30,000 companies, and well being facilities and colleges in all 47 counties, in keeping with the African Growth Financial institution, which helped fund the trouble. Beforehand, the nationwide utility, Kenya Energy, succeeded in rising the variety of grid-connected households within the poorest city areas from 3,000 to 150,000. Kenya additionally has the most important wind farm in Africa, the Lake Turkana Wind Energy Mission. The 310-MW plant’s 365 generators account for about 15 p.c of Kenya’s put in electrical energy capability.
These sustained efforts doubled Kenya’s electrification entry price between 2013 and 2023 to 79 p.c. Kenya Energy now goals to attain common electrical energy entry by 2030.
In the meantime, in Nigeria, essentially 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 develop his mill. With extra electrical energy, he says, “we will develop extra rice, and mill and bag extra for our folks.” If the facility grid received’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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