Access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy is critical for powering Africa, transforming economies, and reaching people’s development aspirations. It is at the heart of our mission to achieve a world free of poverty on a livable planet.
Connecting people, businesses, and economies to electricity not only changes lives, powers hospitals and schools, it also creates job opportunities and fosters investments and trade.
Yet, nearly 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa live without access to electricity, representing nearly 83% of the world’s unelectrified population.
The World Bank Group is partnering with the African Development Bank and other partners on Mission 300, an ambitious initiative to connect 300 million people to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Mission 300 aims to accelerate the pace of electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa while ensuring that the transition to more diversified and cleaner sources of energy meets growing demand, brings economic growth, and creates jobs. Efforts are also focused on investing in generation, transmission, distribution, regional interconnection, and sector reform to ensure quality, reliability, and affordability of power supply.
Mission 300 will only be realized with partnerships and ambition. Reaching this goal will require: governments to do more on sector reforms and make electricity utilities financially viable; the private sector to step in and scale up investments in distributed energy solutions, as well as grid-connected power generation and new models for transmission and distribution; and partners including other multilateral development banks and philanthropies to mobilize more public and concessional financing for both on-grid and off-grid electrification.
LATEST UPDATES
- The Distributed Access with Renewable Energy Scale Up (DARES) Platform leverages collaboration across the World Bank, IFC, MIGA and development partners to significantly accelerate decentralized renewable energy (DRE) access in Sub-Saharan Africa through private sector engagement. It also supports climate, food security, and human capital development goals.
- In Eastern and Southern Africa, the Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation (ASCENT) Program will provide life-transforming energy access to 100 million Africans across 20 countries over the next seven years, placing the region on the path to universal energy access. As a multi-billion-dollar program, ASCENT leverages the comparative advantages of all parts of the World Bank Group (IDA, IFC, MIGA) and provides a platform for collaboration with development partners, the private sector, climate and impact financiers, governments, utilities, and energy service providers, as well as beneficiary communities.
- In Western and Central Africa, Nigeria DARES will benefit over 17.5 million Nigerians, or 20% of the country’s currently unserved population, while replacing over 250,000 polluting and expensive diesel generators. The new Regional Emergency Solar Power Intervention Project (RESPITE) covering Chad, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Togo, also focuses on increasing electricity access to millions of consumers by boosting grid-connected renewable energy capacity.. In addition, efforts to expand grid interconnection and regional cooperation through programs in support of the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) are making it possible to supply cheaper and more reliable electricity to 14 countries in the sub-region. A similar initiative is now gaining traction in the Central African Power Pool.
- Electrifying Africa, a technical assistance facility funded by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), is helping countries develop reform roadmaps and provide just-in time technical assistance to invest in operations.
- Innovative financing and de-risking facilities for energy access are being piloted, including a new equity vehicle to capitalize Distributed Renewable Energy companies. IFC together with the WBG Guarantees team, housed within MIGA, and the World Bank are working on integrating guarantee solutions into the equity vehicle design, streamlining access to de-risking solutions to attract private sector investment in DRE.
- Partners, such as Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), are joining forces by helping mobilize public and private financing in support of powering Africa.
