World Bank’s Power Access Drive Wins Backing From 27 African Nations

(Bloomberg) -- Leaders and senior officials from 27 African nations endorsed a multi-billion dollar program backed by the World Bank to boost access to electricity on the continent.

Dubbed Mission 300, the initiative involves pledges from the World Bank and African Development Bank that will be spent on projects across sub-Saharan Africa in return for countries putting in place regulations to attract private investment. Including private capital, and assistance from philanthropies such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the program could see expenditure of as much as $85 billion, although it was difficult to give a precise estimate, Ajay Banga, the World Bank’s president, said in an interview.

The drive is the biggest attempt yet to tackle one of the biggest impediments to growth in Africa — the lack of access to power. Of the 680 million people globally who lack electricity, 570 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. A dearth of power means children can’t study at night, women spend hours collecting wood for cooking and small businesses struggle to run. That all stunts economic activity. 

“At a time of extreme populism and countries turning inward, this is by far the largest, most significant public-private partnership to create jobs and stability and hope and opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa,” Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said at the Mission 300 African Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “It’s about building a public-private partnership that can achieve that outcome.”

The signatories included Duma Boko, Botswana’s president, and his Zambian counterpart Hakainde Hichilema.

Under the program, nations are expected to to commit to using the lowest-cost electricity — which will generally come from renewable sources, run competitive supply tenders and ensure their power utilities’ tariffs cover their costs.

They must also commit to pursuing universal access to electricity — a tall order in a region where International Energy Agency data from 2019 showed availability ranged from 1% of the population in South Sudan to 94% in South Africa.

Twelve nations to sign up to the program, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, laid out their plans to attract investment at the conference on Monday. Those totaled more than $115 billion. The World Bank expects most remaining sub-Saharan African countries to follow suit at a later stage.

The aim is to connect about half of the 300 million people by 2030 through power projects linked to national grids and the rest through off-grid technologies, such as solar mini-grids.

The two banks expect the program to win support from private-sector developers, financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds and philanthropies by making investing in renewable energy across the sub-Saharan region more profitable. 

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