Private Sector Urged To Join New Charge To Help Electrify Africa

African presidents and ministers attending the recent Africa Energy Summit in Tanzania called on the private sector to play an expanded and more consequential role in the continent's power sector.

The leaders expressed their support for extensive policy reforms aimed at enhancing the sector's attractiveness to investors and delivering universal energy access, stressing that robust public-private partnerships offer the best chance of achieving the bold goals outlined in Mission 300 M300.

Backed by the World Bank, the African Development Bank AfDB, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other development partners, M300 is the most ambitious electrification initiative ever rolled out in Africa. It aims to extend affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity to 300m people on the continent by 2030, substantially lowering the energy deficit in a region where an estimated 600m people currently live without electricity.

M300 secured the endorsement of 30 African countries at the summit in Dar es Salaam, 12 of which unveiled their detailed plans, or "energy compacts", to implement the initiative. The focus now shifts to the initiative's potential for success.The central question on many minds is whether M300 can succeed where other similarly ambitious initiatives have previously fallen short.

Experts remain cautiously optimistic about M300's prospects. They argue that its realisation hinges on the success of ongoing efforts to attract private investments and launch the multitude of new energy projects envisioned in the initiative. A pipeline of 130 projects across the continent have already been mapped out.