According to the International Energy Agency, nearly 600 million people on the African continent still do not have access to electricity, and nearly one billion rely on traditional biofuels for cooking. According to experts, Africa, with its vast forests sequestering carbon and its resources ripe for green growth, has enormous potential to promote access to clean energy for millions of people. Sidi Ould Tah, the new president of the African Development Bank, believes that the development of the continent will depend on industrialization, which must include the electrification of its entire territory.
Over the past decade, the African Development Bank has committed to providing direct access to electricity to more than 28 million people and has helped the continent increase its installed electric capacity by an additional 12,000 megawatts. The « Mission 300 » initiative, launched by the African Development Bank Group and the World Bank Group, in collaboration with other development partners, aims to connect 300 million people in Africa to electricity by 2030. This is an initiative on which Sidi Ould Tah can build during his term to electrify the entire continent of Africa.
We know that even with our best intentions, the World Bank, the AfDB, and even our partners will never be able to mobilize the resources needed for this particular effort. To give you an idea, although I have to take the plunge on the few energy mixes we have developed, we have realized or calculated that it would take about 126 billion dollars to be able to implement these projects comparable to those that will be implemented later.
Kevin Kariuki, Vice President for Electricity and Energy, AfDB
African countries have made commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. To do so, they will have to move towards renewable energies and stop mining. However, the International Energy Agency indicates that renewables currently provide only 24.1% of Africa’s electricity, of which 76% comes from hydropower, a source increasingly affected by climate change.
The Mission 300 is a very good initiative that will fill the electricity deficit by allowing an additional 300 million people to have access to electricity. Our children will be able to keep their vaccines cool. Our women will be able to give birth with dignity. We will have access to medical care in a dignified manner in Africa. But we need to see if we can integrate an adaptation pillar into this Mission 300 in order to reach the necessary threshold of 50% adaptation and 50% deficit mitigation. It is easier to finance mitigation, but it is preferable to finance adaptation.
John Kioli, Chairman, Climate Change Working Group in Kenya
According to the AfDB roadmap, the « Mission 300 » will include strong accountability measures, including country-specific monitoring and evaluation systems and an energy regulation index for Africa, to track progress made in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
