Force 03 / Energy & Resources
More power is being built. Less is reaching people.
Generation is rising while consumption per person falls. Both facts are true at once.
Where it stands
Two numbers that disagree.
Africa added 11.3 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2025, a 15.9 percent rise. That is real building, and it is accelerating.
At the same time, electricity use in Sub-Saharan Africa fell to 377 kilowatt hours per person, down from 392 in 2021. And 44.9 percent of the population still has no electricity access at all.
Both are true. Capacity is being added faster than population growth in some places and slower in others, and much of what is added never reaches a paying customer.
Renewables already supply about 70 percent of final energy consumption in the region, but most of that is firewood and charcoal for cooking, not electricity. The word covers two very different things.
What decides it
What decides whether the lights stay on.
The utility, not the plant
Building a power station is a solved engineering problem with willing financiers. Getting the electricity to a customer who pays for it is neither.
Transmission is the constraint
Solar is cheap where the sun is strongest, which is usually far from where the load is. Without a line to move it, cheap generation is stranded generation.
Offtake, in writing
A power purchase agreement is the project. Its counterparty, its tenor, its currency and its termination clauses determine whether the plant is financeable at all.
What outsiders miss
Africa holds a large share of the minerals the energy transition needs. Extracting them creates royalties and jobs at the pit. Refining them creates an industry.
What it means
The gap is the market.
Every kilowatt hour that does not reach a customer is demand already waiting. Capacity is being added faster here than almost anywhere. The wires and the meters are the part still to build.
The Brief
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