Live Data FAQs

• Detailed profiles of more than 7,000 projects.
  • Key data: status, location (province, locality), installed capacity, fuel, technology, design electricity production, reservoir capacity (hydropower), ownership type, connection type, critical milestones (including commercial operations date, financial close), substations.
  • Explore a project’s background and project history, financing, financial summary, equity holders, offtakers, contractors, electricity production.
     
• Map interface (with satellite view, street map view) showing project location and transmission lines.
   
• Organisation profiles
  • Providing access to organisations and entities developing, building, supplying, financing and investing in, power projects across Africa –developers, utilities, ministries, regulators, commissions, funds, banks, DFIs, contractors and service providers.
  • Explore an organisation’s power assets, power asset sales, project financing, contracts, subsidiaries, offtakers.
     
• Access to the latest power sector statistics through the Data too.
  • Analyse electricity sector vital statistics and demographics alongside the project pipeline.
  • View five-year fuel and technology pipelines.
  • Analyse trends from 2010 to five years into the future.
  • Compare countries to optimise investment strategies.
  • Identify gaps in the market and potential oversupply risks.
  • Download data for use in pitches and presentations.
     

For a complete list of fields please see the Data Catalogue

Conduct an integrated search of projects and organisations to understand the competitive environment and observe industry trends.

For example, you could search which companies are supplying equipment to solar PV projects in Kenya or which Egyptian banks are providing finance to solar projects across the continent.

African Energy staff conducted a search in November 2022 which showed that Chinese organisations (both private and state-owned) were involved in over 7GW of operating, on-grid projects across Southern Africa.

Use the Data Tool to create custom downloadable data reports.

The Data Tool allows subscribers to aggregate and breakdown the project data from the platform and compare trends at a country and regional level from 2010 to 2025.

Alongside live figures from the database, the data tool allows comparisons with economic and demographic trends, as well as other electricity sector vital statistics such as access to power. This means subscribers can place their projects into a strategic context and quickly assess fundamental prospects for business in every market on the continent.

Statistics in the Data Tool are generated from the ground up, so all figures correspond to a power plant on the ground that the Live Data team has investigated.

Explore the Data Tool further

Investors, lenders and fund managers can identify, evaluate and compare planned projects at any stage of development by searching for key dates or following the progress of main procurement programmes in relevant countries.

Use the detailed project pages to assess developers and potential project partners by following ownership structure of projects from SPVs through to ultimate beneficial owners.

Look through potential lenders and equity partners and review their track records in supporting power projects in Africa.  

Contractors and equipment, technology and service suppliers can use the detailed search functionality to identify projects matching their market profile.

The results can be used to build informed country-by-country market development plans: Identify lists of target projects and obtain an understanding of potential requirements from the detailed project pages.

African Energy Live Data’s Organisation search lets contractors and suppliers identify key principal organisations involved in projects and plants either as sponsors, financiers or key contractors.

They can also identify potential customers in areas such as ‘Healthcare and education’, ‘Industry, mining, and agriculture’, and ‘Property, retail, and tourism’.

Yes. Many African Energy Live Data users from project sponsors to private equity general partners, use our continually updated data as the foundation of presentations to potential investors or partners.

African Energy Live Data’s Data tool is designed for this purpose, creating custom data reports which are ready to print and take away

Our Data Insight reports provide additional context and analysis of the trends you need to understand to support your decision making and are available free to full African Energy Live Data subscribers.

African Energy has a history going back to 1998 of providing reliable and quality data in markets where other sources cannot be trusted. Live Data uses the same methods, relying on experienced staff for its research and live updating processes,

Our approach is to use primary materials such as annual reports, licence and permitting documents wherever possible and to engage with the companies and authorities developing the projects to verify what is happening first hand.

If our staff don’t have a high degree of confidence in the information, then it will not go into the database – more research is required by our team.

Read more about our methodology