Around 600m people in sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity. If each person in sub-Saharan Africa turned on a single 50-watt light bulb, it would double the region's electricity consumption. The International Energy Agency estimates that 220m people cannot pay for enough power to run a phone charger, a radio and a few lights. Nearly half of African households that live close to a grid are not connected.
African utilities rarely cover their costs. Tariffs in Africa are typically higher than in poor countries elsewhere, pushed up by the steep cost of capital. When power is priced to encourage investment in generation, many households cannot afford to buy it; when prices are too low, neither private investors nor state firms build the necessary infrastructure.
The falling cost of solar power is beginning to change the picture. Globally the "levelised" cost of solar electricity fell by 21% in 2024 alone, according to BloombergNEF. In South Africa, solar electricity costs about a quarter as much as coal. Countries in the Sahel could make big savings by switching from heavy fuel oil to solar. In the year to June 2025 African countries imported 15GW of solar panels from China, according to Ember, a British think-tank—equivalent to adding four Kenyas of generation capacity. Mini-grids and rooftop panels light up villages that the grid cannot profitably reach.
Roughly half of new non-residential solar capacity in Africa over the past two years was installed by firms opting to make their own power. That helps them beat blackouts, but if utilities lose their most lucrative customers, more costs must be passed on to everyone else.
Fourteen west African countries share power through an interconnected grid. Several countries, from South Africa to Uganda, are inviting private investors to improve transmission. Of the $2.4bn of finance committed to new connections in Africa in 2023, three-quarters came from multilateral funds, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank, which want to connect 300m people by 2030.
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