
Africa’s Electrification Gains Are Being Erased by Population Growth
Energy poverty in Africa remains high in 2026 as population growth outpaces electrification, erasing gains and reshaping access policy.


Energy poverty in Africa remains high in 2026 as population growth outpaces electrification, erasing gains and reshaping access policy.

For more than a decade, the global energy transition has been sold as a story of technology. We are told solar panels are getting cheaper, wind turbines are getting taller, and batteries are...

Africa’s electricity demand is rising faster than economic growth, breaking a long-held pattern. The result is a growing gap the system isn’t ready for.

As Mining Indaba opens in a few days, one point of alignment is already clear: value addition has become the dominant political language around Africa’s future in critical minerals. From policy...

The statistic is now familiar enough to sound almost ritualistic. Africa receives around 2% of global clean energy investment, despite hosting nearly a fifth of the world’s population, the...

For most of the past decade, climate finance has been discussed as a moral equation. If African countries showed ambition, net-zero targets, transition plans, long lists of renewable projects, and...

Africa’s energy future has been modelled in extraordinary detail. The real question is why so little of it materialises. Across think tanks, multilateral banks, consultancies, and academic...

Across Lagos and beyond, diesel generators power daily life but at a huge cost, draining billions and distorting Africa’s power systems.

I have walked through towns where the ground is rich, but the people are not. Places where the earth underneath your feet could power the world’s clean-energy future, yet the homes beside the road...

COP30 introduced a new global Just Transition Mechanism, a framework meant to protect workers and communities as the world accelerates away from fossil fuels. It sounded momentous, the kind of policy...

At the COP30 roundtable in Belém, UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a quiet but pointed warning: “The world will not achieve clean energy for all unless we invest massively in grids,...

At COP30 in Belém, amid speeches about green growth and net-zero futures, one statement is worth noting. “For much of the developing world, high debt, high risk and a high cost of capital make...