The Nigerian Model Leading Africa Towards Universal Energy Access

Recently, African leaders, international partners, philanthropic organisations and private sector stakeholders converged on Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, for a two-day Mission 300 Africa Energy summit. It was a landmark effort to tackle Africa’s energy access challenges and promote sustainable development for Africa’s transition to clean energy.

The Summit was co-sponsored by the African Development Bank and the World Bank and hosted by the government of Tanzania.

Tanzania has not only recorded significant progress in scaling up access to clean electricity but is also fast becoming a model for the rest of Africa in terms of new strategies for supplying electrificity to its peoples.

The high-level global energy meeting provided a platform for consolidating commitments and announcing new partnerships to advance the achievement of the 2030 electricity connectivity goal for Africa.

Under the aegis of the Africa Rescue Mission, the meeting identified five key areas to accelerate the realisation of its objectives, including universal energy access, renewable energy dominance, energy efficiency, regional integration and climate change mitigation measures.

With the target of advancing Mission 300, the summit aims to deliver electricity to 300 million Africans by the year 2030. This will also create opportunities for collective efforts of Heads of State and Government to accelerate energy access across Africa, needed to power the future of the continent.

Across African countries, the energy sector solely relies on traditional resources like coal, hydro-power, natural gas and oil. These make up nearly 80% of the total electricity production.

While nations in Northern and Southern Africa have made progress in tackling energy generation and sustainability issues, challenges remain in Central Africa and the Sahel regions.

The twelve participating nations including Chad, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Mauritania and Zambia, provided detailed energy compacts that set targets for their nations to scale up electricity access and increase renewable energy use to attract investments.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank have committed a combined $40 billion to the ambitious “Mission 300” initiative, which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million people across Africa by 2030.

Despite this progress, Africa still has over 571 million people without electricity, a situation the Mission 300 Africa Energy summit seeks to address.

Tackling the Africa’s electricity deficit will undoubtedly require bold reforms, investments and an enabling environment for sustainable, scalable and affordable energy solutions.

This is the genesis of the Dar Es-Salaam Energy Declaration: a landmark commitment to expand reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity access across Africa.

While highlighting her country’s success story on energy solution and generation strategy, Tanzania’s President, Samia Suluhu Hassan, reiterrated her commitment to deliver to Tanzanians, electricity and clean cooking solutions that would transform lives and economies, in line with the energy compact strategy.

Bold as this commitment is, it remains one that Africans need urgently, as envisioned in the 2025 Energy Compact Strategy Declaration.

It is no wonder therefore, that Thirty (30) African leaders including Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, have all adopted and signed the declaration, a major step towards closing Africa’s energy gap.

The 30-nation signatories to the Dar-es- Salaam Energy Declaration plan to achieve their goals through National Energy Compacts, which would identify specific policy measures to address constraints across their energy sectors, set targets based on their unique contexts and seek required financing windows from the AfDB, the World Bank and other financial institutions.

This also falls in line with the goal of the Nigerian Electricity Act 2024, which sets aside five percent of the annual operating expenditure of power generating companies from the preceding year for the development of their host communities, to accelerate the increased generation of electricity for the underserved populations in Nigeria.

Leading Africa to achieve this goal, Nigeria unveiled a $23.2 billion investment target in its National Energy Compact plan. The country currently prioritizes the mobilisation of $15.5 billion in private sector investment to drive last-mile electrification across the country.

Through this programme, the Nigerian government would increase electricity access from four per cent to nine percent annually. This is geared towards closing the energy gap and boosting access to clean cooking solutions from 22 percent to 25 percent annually.

Nigeria also targets an expansion of its renewable energy share in the power generation mix, from 22 percent to 50 percent through private investment, to drive its last-mile electrification in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), on universal access to modern energy services.

By implementing the action plan in the National Energy Compact, Nigeria is positioning as a leader in Africa’s energy transition and creating opportunities for economic growth, job creation and industrialisation.

As the Mission 300 initiative gains momentum, Nigeria’s strong commitment to energy sector reforms, infrastructure expansion and investment mobilisation will be crucial in shaping the future of electricity access across the continent.

Recognising that achieving universal energy access demands collective action, the government has called on development partners, philanthropists and the private sector to join this transformative journey.

Already the Africa Energy Summit has attracted about $50 billion commitments from the AfDB, World Bank and other regional financial bodies like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Islamic Development Bank (IDB), OPEC Fund, and AFD of France, among others.

For now, Nigerians and indeed, all of Africa expectantly await swift implementation in the initial twelve benefiting nations, which will translate to the provision of sustainable electricity to 250 million people in the targeted African nations by 2030.