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, 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 fuel subsidy in 2023, Joe’s gasoline prices soared, lowering the cash he can put money into extra land and different enhancements.
What’s holding again Africa’s electrification?
Joe’s predicament will not be distinctive. In sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million folks—about 53 p.c—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 a number of 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 supplied 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 The place grids do exist, “they’re outdated, unstable, and lack buyer connections,” the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported in 2023.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 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 University, who research electrical energy utilization within the area. “Our newest analysis reveals that [sub-Saharan] households are completely satisfied 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 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 handle this dire scarcity, the World Bank and the African Development Bank introduced an initiative final 12 months known as Mission 300, to convey electrical energy to 300 million folks in sub-Saharan Africa—about half the quantity who lack entry now—by 2030. Such a fast enlargement means bringing electrical energy to a further 4.2 million folks each month on common.
Whereas believable, the enlargement faces headwinds, most notably from the sub-Saharan’s web inhabitants achieve of about 2.5 million folks monthly. If that inhabitants development continues for all six years of the initiative, there will likely be a further 180 million folks requiring electrical energy entry.
“The problem is giant. 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 may be costly and gradual, particularly in rural and distant areas, the place many of the unelectrified folks 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 ageing energy grid and forestall future blackouts.
Massive variations in electrical energy entry persist amongst and inside African nations. In keeping with a 2020 report from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, within the East, West, and Southern African areas, about half the folks have entry to electrical energy, however the proportion falls to a mere 30 p.c in Central Africa, the place practically 100 million of us haven’t any electrical energy entry. And according to the World Bank, 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, apart from Libya, have electrification charges of 100%.)
Off-grid photo voltaic’s untapped potential in Africa
Fossil fuels nonetheless play a giant position in Africa’s energy technology. Pure gasoline is the only largest supply of electrical energy technology, 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 pattern is shifting towards renewable vitality sources.
An electronics store in Kenya sells photo voltaic panels. Off-grid photo voltaic has been a giant 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 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 a giant means,” says Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council in London. “There are already about 600 million folks, virtually all in sub-Saharan Africa, who use off-grid photo voltaic and storage at the very least as soon as per week.” Dunlop expects to see a 40 p.c 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 know-how extra reasonably priced, the enlargement of microfinancing will likely 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 houses 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 night time. 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 convey 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 a giant 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 big 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 necessary for distant and small communities of round 50 to 500 houses, MacColl says. Massive dams are underneath building or have been not too long ago accomplished in Angola, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zambia.
However developing hydropower dams is expensive and carries the danger of corruption and mismanagement that comes with large tasks, in addition to the price of connecting a brand new energy supply to the facility grid. As an example, Nigeria’s $5.8 billion, 3,050-MW Mambilla dam, which is able to turn out to be the biggest 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. Climate change’s impact on rainfall and temperature can also 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 task in closing Africa’s electrical energy hole. The African Energy Chamber, an trade group primarily based in Johannesburg, notes in its 2025 Outlook Report that “a major variety of nations in Africa are contemplating embarking on nuclear energy programmes.”
At this time, 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 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 at the very least 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 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 a further 280,000 residences, 30,000 companies, and well being facilities and faculties in all 47 counties, in keeping with 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 biggest wind farm in Africa, the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project. 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 access rate between 2013 and 2023 to 79 p.c. Kenya Energy now goals to realize 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 will develop extra rice, and mill and bag extra for our folks.” If the facility grid received’t—or can’t—come to him, at the very least he has the means to generate his personal electrical energy to satisfy his personal wants.
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