World Bank, AfDB to Boost African Electrification Plan This Year
(Bloomberg) -- The World Bank and African Development Bank plan to accelerate their program to bring electricity to hundreds of millions of Africans this year by approving new projects, investing in Eritrea and promoting the development of regional power pools.
The so-called Mission 300 program is the biggest attempt yet to boost energy access on a continent that’s home to about 80% of the 570 million people globally who have no access to power.
The program is expected to see tens of billions of dollars invested to reach a target of 300 million connections by 2030 as the development institutions push governments to enact power-industry reforms to woo private investors in exchange for funding.
“The momentum that we’ve been working on is starting to pay off,” Anna Bjerde, the World Bank’s managing director of operations, said in an interview. “Governments have to double down on reforms because nothing flows in an area where there’s uncertainty. There’s no investment flowing to uncertainty.”
To date the program, created in 2024, has brought power to more than 50 million people. So far 36 countries have produced compacts, detailed plans on how to boost power access, under the program and that number is expected to rise to more than 40 in 2026, according to Bjerde.
This year the African Development Bank plans to approve projects itself to bring power connections to as many as 15 million people, said Kevin Kariuki, the lender’s vice president for power, energy, climate and green growth. Those projects include a program of about $59 million to roll out mini-grids in Eritrea, one of the world’s most isolated nations.
“Some bragging rights are in order. We are currently the most active multilateral development bank in Eritrea,” Kariuki said in an interview. “It’s in countries where there is almost nothing that transformation can be most visible.”
Eritrea, which has been led by Isaias Afwerki since 1993, has fought wars against its neighbors and has been in default to the World Bank since 2012.
Other programs set up under the Mission 300 umbrella are also expected to get underway this year.
Zafiri, a $176 million platform set up to buy equity stakes in companies that provide off-grid power to help them expand, expects to make its first investments this year, according to Andrew Herskowitz of the Rockefeller Foundation, which helped set it up.
Nations in east and southern Africa are also being pushed to develop cross-border trading in power through interconnected grids.
“We’re really back into power pools,” Bjerde said. “If Africa can get these pools to work, you can lower costs across borders and take advantage of countries with surpluses.”
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