Africa Network

Africa Network

The Africa regional network currently spans from Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt in the North to Namibia and Kingdom of Eswatini in the South, including many Central African countries. While the continent is endowed with untapped human capital and significant conventional and renewable energy resources, an estimated 600 million people still lack access to electricity.

National Member Committees are interested in engaging in activities and events that provide opportunity to collaborate cross-border to establish dialogue, foster an exchange of impartial views and best practice, and identify common areas of research and action on issues such as energy access and affordability, energy efficiency, regional integration and interconnectivity, cross-border and trans-continental power transmission network, and tapping the entrepreneurial potential of grassroots innovation.

To facilitate these activities, the African regional network is developing working level relationships with African Union Commission (AUC), COMESA, ECOWAS, African Energy Commission (AFREC), and Association of Power Utilities of Africa (APUA).  

Regional action priorities that support the Council’s mission and humanising energy vision are agreed on an annual basis by national Member Committees in the framework of a Regional Action Plan.

Each month, the African regional network meets to discuss matters of mutual interest, drive collective activities, and keep each other updated on relevant developments and events. In addition, throughout the year regionally targeted workshops are being organised to advance discussions in the context of our global insights and innovation tools.

Energy in Africa

INTRODUCTION 

The Africa Regional Commentary builds on insights surfaced through this year’s World Energy Issues Monitor survey, alongside the outcomes of the rich dialogue shared by our community. It reflects the perspectives shared across a region navigating a fast – paced and highly diversified energy landscape. The survey and dialogues were conducted prior to the ongoing situation in the Middle East and therefore reflect conditions at that point in time. 

Africa’s transition remains anchored in expanding access, strengthening reliability, and supporting economic development, while the focus is shifting from security of supply to the enabling financial security. Recent experience has highlighted the limits of ambition when delivery is constrained by financing system – readiness gaps and rising affordability pressures. Transitions are unfolding as a complex system navigating financial, institutional, and infrastructural pressure, where bankability, grid capability, and planning discipline determine what is feasible to deliver.  

Several 2025 signals reinforced this shift. Leaders underscored the widening gap between project potential and bankable delivery, with early – stage capital scarcity, currency exposure, and utility liabilities constraining investment. At the same time, the grid has become a decisive bottleneck: long transmission timelines, ageing assets, and slow regional – market development limit the ability to translate generation potential into access, productive – use demand, and economic resilience. Affordability – shaped by tariff structures, rising cost of capital, and social expectations – has moved from a background concern to a determining factor for legitimacy and investability.  

Africa’s transition is becoming more visibly system – bound. Weak demand baselines, limited productive – use ecosystems, supply – chain constraints, and capacity gaps across utilities and regulators are making delivery harder to sustain at pace. At the same time, emerging digital loads, including data – centre growth are beginning to add pressure to networks that are already managing expansion in alignment with other priorities. This reinforces the need for stronger system visibility, better siting decisions, and more strategic planning. These pressures also connect energy more directly to economic security: not only how to extend access, but how to do so in ways that support financially viable systems, productive use, and long – term resilience. A further layer of uncertainty lies in the social and regional dimensions of Africa’s transition. The phased retirement of coal assets – most visibly in South Africa’s Mpumalanga coal belt – highlights the challenge of managing employment, regional economic dependence, and electricity affordability simultaneously, turning Just Transition from a policy aspiration into a live system challenge. 

This is why Africa’s 2026 Issues Survey results emphasize this view: constraints are now increasingly systemic – rooted in financing conditions, grid readiness, policy execution, skills availability, and institutional credibility – rather than a shortage of energy resources or transition opportunity. 

Under these conditions, the leadership task becomes one of World Energy Trilemma – tested delivery: expanding access while holding affordability, security, and sustainability together in real time, and strengthening the system foundations needed to turn ambition into durable progress. 

CRITICAL UNCERTAINTIES AND ACTION PRIORITIES 

Top Critical Uncertainty: Finance & Investment

Finance & Investment has become Africa’s defining operating condition in 2026, shaping infrastructure timelines, investor confidence, and the pace at which access, reliability, and productive demand can be expanded. The uncertainty is increasingly more about whether projects can create the conditions needed for capital to flow; credible policy signals, financially viable utilities, tariff frameworks that balance affordability with sustainability, and risk structures that reflect African market realities.  

Uncertainty is intensifying within a wider shift across the regional operating environment. Between 2025 and 2026, Global Cooperation & Trade Rules shows a marked increase in both perceived impact and uncertainty, suggesting that external financing conditions, trade alignment, and the wider terms of participation in global value chains are becoming more material to regional delivery prospects. Between the years, Peace & Stability Risks also rise in impact, while easing slightly in uncertainty, indicating that stability remains a significant concern but is increasingly being treated as an operating condition rather than an unknown. Economic Security & Industrial Competitiveness remains comparatively stable across the two years, continuing to register high impact while sitting lower on the uncertainty axis. In that sense, economic security appears as an established practical concern already shaping investment and planning choices across the region. 

Top Action Priority: An Access‑Anchored Delivery Spine 

Africa’s action priorities cluster around the foundational systems though which the region is pursuing access, reliability, and economic development simultaneously. Infrastructure planning, affordability, economic security, and grid expansion, are central to how transition is being defined in the African context. Enabling finance to unlock this is critical. The region’s energy transition is being organised around the building of systems that can expand access, support productive demand and flexibility management, and strengthen resilience at the same time. 

• Power grids as the delivery backbone: grid expansion and strengthening emerged as one of the clearest priorities because they determine how far energy systems can connect people, productive demand, and new investment opportunities. Long transmission timelines, capacity constraints, and limited regional – market functionality continue to shape what can move at pace. Stronger grids and deeper cross – border exchange are not only technical upgrades; they are core to regional resilience, reliability, and economic possibility. 

• Infrastructure planning as the basis for future demand: leaders stressed the need to integrate least – cost planning with technical validation, and to plan for future load and industrial demand – not generation alone. Future industrial zones, new data centre clusters, and electrified economic corridors require planning frameworks that anticipate where demand is emerging and how systems can support it – making integrated, forward – looking planning the determinant of delivery pace. 

• Affordability as a condition of durable progress: household affordability, cost – reflective tariffs, and industrial competitiveness remain tightly interconnected. The issue is not simply whether prices recover costs, but whether systems can remain financially viable while supporting broad – based access and economic participation. Leaders emphasised that expanding investment and expanding access must be held together through approaches that recognise affordability as part of system durability. In coal – dependent systems, affordability pressures are shaped by transition sequencing. The early costs of coal phase – down and system restructuring can temporarily raise electricity prices, even as diversified generation mixes are introduced, amplifying social sensitivity and political scrutiny. 

• Economic security as part of the energy agenda itself: High cost of capital, currency exposure, utility balance sheets, and supply reliability all shape whether energy systems can support productive development at scale. Strengthening utility finances, stabilising macro – economic frameworks, and ensuring predictable, competitively priced energy are core to sustaining investor confidence and enabling the access, reliability, and economic – development outcomes that define the region’s delivery agenda. 

BLIND SPOTS AND BRIGHT SPOTS 

Africa continues to expand generation capacity and pursue regional integration, but the 2026 picture is increasingly shaped by underlying system and legitimacy conditions that often remain secondary until they slow or distort delivery. The Issues Map and regional dialogues identified that transitions are moving faster than the foundations – planning discipline, market functionality, and system capacity – can comfortably support. 

Blind Spots 

• Circularity and embedded carbon overlooked in system planning: 
  While deployment of solar, wind, and battery technologies across Africa is accelerating, end – of – life pathways, recycling capacity, and embedded – carbon considerations remain largely absent from planning and regulation. This leaves countries exposed to future liabilities such as unmanaged solar and battery waste. Without integrating circularity early – Africa risks scaling clean energy in ways that undermine long‑term affordability, supply‑chain resilience, and environmental credibility as deployment volumes rise. 

• Storage and flexibility underweighted despite rising renewable shares: 
  The importance of flexibility is well known, yet storage, demand – response mechanisms, and distributed solutions remain peripheral in formal planning and regulatory design. This blind spot heightens the risk that variable renewable development outpaces the ability to integrate them, reinforcing imbalances and increasing reliance on diesel backup or expensive balancing tools.  

• Dynamic resilience affecting ability to withstand disruption: Rating low in uncertainty and impact, resilience is still framed primarily around reliability rather than as a dynamic capability to manage climate shocks, cyber risks, supply – chain disruptions, and rapid load shifts. Without embedding resilience – by – design – across operations, markets, and regional coordination – Africa’s power systems remain vulnerable to cascading failures, prolonged restoration times, and rising economic losses as electrification deepens. 

Bright Spots 

• South Africa: Utility reform under pressure: South Africa’s energy transition reflects the complexity of reform in a large, coal – dependent power system under stress. The restructuring of Eskom into separate generation, transmission, and distribution entities is one of Africa’s most significant utility reform efforts, aimed at restoring system credibility and enabling private investment. Regulatory changes have already accelerated private renewable capacity, easing supply constraints. South Africa’s experience demonstrates that institutional reform – not projects alone – is central to advancing transition pathways at scale.  

• Kenya: Planning discipline and demand – anchored electrification: 
  Kenya continues to demonstrate the value of long – term, least – cost planning combined with strong grid – integration capability, enabling high renewable penetration, circa 90%, without compromising stability. Ongoing investment in productive – use demand – such as agri-processing, cooling, e-mobility – is helping to anchor access programmes financially and socially, strengthening the access – equity system foundation. Regional interconnection through the Eastern Africa Power Pool positions Kenya to translate surplus generation into regional flexibility and resilience.  

• Egypt: System scale leveraged into balancing capacity and industrial growth 
  Egypt’s large, interconnected system provides a foundation for integrating new renewables while maintaining dispatchability and operational stability. Cross‑border interconnections not only enable long‑term energy trade, but also enhance system security by supporting reserve sharing, variability management, and operational reliability – creating the conditions for higher renewable penetration. Grid reinforcement and industrial zone planning – especially around the Suez Canal Green Corridor – demonstrate how energy planning can be directly linked to productive use cases in Europe and the Middle East. These ambitions position Egypt as a central regional energy hub that converts system scale capability into flexibility and economic security gains. 

• Ghana: Restoring investor confidence through financial stabilisation 
  Ghana’s progress in clearing legacy utility debts and stabilising dollar exposure has improved sector credibility and re‑opened pathways for private investment. By lowering perceived payment and currency risks, these reforms help reduce the cost of capital, strengthen investor confidence, and enable faster financial close and project implementation. Efforts to strengthen tariff frameworks and reduce losses are helping align affordability, bankability, and system resilience. These reforms show how addressing financial fundamentals can unlock delivery capacity and restore momentum across the wider energy system. 

CONCLUSION 

The events and signals surfacing throughout 2025 reinforced a reality for Africa where transitions are unfolding as system navigation under compounding pressure – where finance shapes feasibility, grids shape what can be delivered at pace, and planning discipline shapes whether access and reliability can expand sustainably. The 2026 Issues Monitor reflects this: uncertainty is concentrated around investment and bankability, system pressures are rising, and areas of progress now coexist with fragility in the same operating space. 

Four signals stand out: 

• Finance & Investment has hardened into the dominant uncertainty, with early – stage capital gaps, legacy utility liabilities, currency exposure, and instrument mismatches determining which projects move and which stall – shaping access, reliability, and industrial growth.  

• Delivery throughput sets the pace: grid expansion, transmission capacity, integrated planning, affordability conditions, and economic security are no longer enabling “nice – to – haves” but the enabling delivery spine – determining how quickly access, productive – use demand, and new generation can scale.  

• Demand realism and productive – use anchoring are emerging as strategic uncertainties, with leaders warning that weak baselines and underdeveloped productive – use ecosystems risk undermining financial sustainability and long – term system stability. Flexible solutions that balance supply and demand are required. 

• Regional market functionality and cross – border integration remain underweighted, even as they are essential to flexibility, affordability, and reliability across the continent  – revealing a gap between continental ambition and the operational readiness of regional power pools. Initiatives such as the continent’s most established cross – border electricity cooperation framework, the Southern African Power Pool, provide a robust foundation to build upon. 

Across the region, the task is to sequence delivery under constraint, protecting what works while modernising what blocks throughput. The agenda is delivery over declarations: reinforce and extend grids; accelerate integrated planning and demand anchoring; strengthen affordability frameworks that balance cost recovery with social protection; de – risk early – stage project development; and invest in institutional and technical capacity as deliberately as in physical infrastructure. The goal is Trilemma – tested progress – advancing security AND affordability AND sustainability together, without allowing any single pressure point to crowd out the others.

Download the full report below.

KEY CONTRIBUTORS 

The Africa commentary draws on insights from across the World Energy Council community, and we are grateful to those who shared perspectives and challenge points that helped sharpen this year’s framing, particularly the South Africa Member Committee and Egypt Member Committee.