On a blustery August morning at Medupi Power Station, South Africa’s electricity minister announced that the country was nearing a permanent end to load shedding — the rolling blackouts that have damaged economic growth in Africa’s biggest economy in recent years.
“We’ve turned a corner. We are within touching distance,” of the long-touted milestone of ending power cuts, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said as he stood on the grounds of Medupi, one of 14 coal-fired power stations in Africa’s most industrialised country.
A third of the total electricity generated across the entire African continent is produced by Eskom, the state-owned utility that also supplies 90 per cent of South Africa’s own electricity.
But within South Africa itself, Eskom is at the top of a chain that for years has creaked under the weight of ageing coal-fired power stations, as well as corruption and sabotage.
That even the continent’s most industrialised country is struggling to keep the lights on highlights the scale of the challenge of bringing universal access to Africa’s 600mn people — more than 80 per cent of the global total — still living without reliable access to electricity.
While countries in the Maghreb are close to achieving universal access, vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa remain shrouded in darkness each night. For millions, this lack of reliable and affordable electricity represents a significant barrier to education, healthcare, economic opportunity and a better quality of life.
From Angola to Zimbabwe, experts warn that simply ending blackouts does not necessarily translate to the energy services needed to power a region expected to grow at 4.3 per cent this year, the world’s highest rate.
“Between a big power station such as Medupi and a poor resident in a township getting electricity, there is a whole massive system,” points out Hilton Trollip, an independent consultant in energy research and research fellow at the University of Cape Town.
Even when it comes to last-mile delivery, “light is one energy service, while cooking on an electric hotplate or heating water is another one, and these are all so different that they have to be looked at in a different way. There is no one-size solution that fits all, even within the same country,” says Trollip.
The task ahead is enormous. Reaching universal, affordable access will require connecting 90mn people each year, three times more than the current rate, the International Energy Agency estimates. The African Development Bank puts the cost of investment at $64bn annually.
Policy changes will help attract much-needed investment but ageing power grids, in some cases dating back to colonial times, will need to be overhauled and new transmission lines laid down. Africa’s average transmission and distribution losses hover at about 20 per cent, compared with nearer 5 per cent in developed countries.
Global geopolitics is significantly shaping the energy trajectories of several African countries. Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has pushed up fuel prices, has in turn affected countries that are dependent on diesel-guzzling generators. Russia has also exerted growing influence on the energy policymaking of a crop of Sahelian countries seeking to realign away from former colonial rulers.
Much of Africa’s energy inequality has deep roots in colonial-era systems, which prioritised urban elites and extractive industries, leaving rural populations excluded, a pattern that remains entrenched. Often remote and deeply impoverished, such areas are home to more than 80 per cent of those without power, where mini-grids and standalone solar systems are often the best solutions.
All this requires energy transitions to meet two complex — and sometimes seemingly contradictory — goals: expanding access and shifting to low-carbon systems.
There are quick wins to be had in moving to green energy, which already accounts for 55 per cent of the continent’s energy needs. Abundant sunshine and new rapidly developing technology is pushing many African countries to make the switch.
Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, with ambitious targets for centralised solar power going from almost nothing currently to 8GW in 2030 and 10 times that by 2040. Meanwhile, South Africa, among the world’s most coal-dependent nations, in 2022 had attracted $8.5bn to help it transition more quickly to clean energy under its Just Energy Transition Partnership.
But industry analysts caution that switching too fast is not optimal.
“Energy realism is the fact that . . . an energy mix has to be embraced over a period of time,” says Mike Teke, chief executive of the Southern Africa chapter of industry lobby group FutureCoal.
“Yes [renewable] technology is becoming more advanced . . . but the reality is that you need a base load for 24 hours. So coal will still be part of the energy mix.”
Still, the continent is poised to make a transformative leap in its energy sector, with the AfDB suggesting nearly 88 per cent of its required new power capacity could eventually come from renewable sources as governments capitalise on the continent’s vast and largely untapped renewable energy potential.
In Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries that sprawls across the Sahara desert, a 60MW solar plant is under way in the capital of Niamey. The government has embarked on a plan to import 200,000 solar panels from China by the end of next year.
Mineral wealth has not always translated to equitable distribution. In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, electricity shortages are both a daily frustration and a barrier to development.
Some 85mn people lack grid access, while others endure outages that can last months — the country’s official generation capacity of 12,000MW drops to just 6,000MW when delivered at peak.
Despite oil wealth, the power sector runs at a loss, plagued by mismanagement, vandalism and weak regulatory enforcement. Electricity tariffs remain too low to attract investment, meaning in the first quarter of 2025 alone, the government spent $350mn on electricity subsidies.
All this has fuelled solar panel imports, which hit 4mn in 2023.
“People are losing hope with the grid, but also with the prices of diesel and petrol increasing post-Russia/Ukraine, there’s just a lot more focus on how cheap solar is,” notes Noelle Okwedy, an independent energy analyst based in Lagos.
Alongside an Electricity Act signed in 2023 that is expected to draw fresh investors to the country’s fast-growing urbanised states, “it’s promising in the sense that there’s then potentially less of a burden on the national grid, and more people can have access to electricity,” says Okwedy.
As traditional grids struggle to keep pace, nuclear is seen by some as a high-stakes but potentially transformative move to secure energy for future growth.
While only South Africa has an operating nuclear power plant, east African countries — with the fastest-growing population and GDP share on the continent — such as Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania are eyeing nuclear power as a long-term solution.
Uganda has committed to a 2,000MW nuclear plant by 2031, more than doubling its current capacity, while others have signed preliminary agreements for similar infrastructure.
Still, the road to nuclear is long, expensive and politically fraught, experts caution.
“Nuclear sounds like you can almost immediately solve all your [electricity] problems,” says Hartmut Winkler, a professor of physics at the University of Johannesburg who also advises the International Atomic Energy Agency. “But it takes a very long time to build and if you actually do the calculations, it comes with a very hefty price tag.”
“You really need long-term stability and broad public support,” Winkler adds, pointing to countries as diverse as Cuba and Austria where projects have stalled because of a lack of public support.
Amid global market turbulence and tariff uncertainty, many African countries are short of foreign currency and export revenues, meaning funding for such projects is difficult.
Rwanda and Kenya, both proposing smaller research reactors, are most likely to succeed, analysts say, although recent political instability in Kenya also presents hurdles.
Geopolitics comes into play too, with Russia single-handedly accounting for nuclear energy-linked agreements with 18 African states.
New military leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso, increasingly realigning towards Russia, are also promoting nuclear power to combat energy poverty. Both countries signed agreements with Russia’s state-owned nuclear utility Rosatom in 2023.
But with the scale of nuclear projects far exceeding the grid and economic capacities of Sahel nations, Russia’s involvement “appears to be a strategic move to secure political and economic influence”, says Winkler.
