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African nations, the governments of partner countries, international financial institutions (IFIs) and private investors are increasing their commitments to achieving universal energy access, the seventh of the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDG7). But the prospects of reaching the SDG7 target by 2030 are receding as population numbers continue to rise. A daunting amount of work remains to be done if SDG7 is to be achieved. In a newly published report commissioned by the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP), Cross-border Information – the parent company of African Energy – has analysed financial flows towards SDG7 over the past seven years and their estimated potential trajectories to 2030 and beyond.

African electricity markets are on the threshold of genuine reform in 2024, even if policy-makers’ grandest ambitions are destined to meet with disappointment. African Energy has examined the first data that has emerged from the third development phase of the African Union’s Continental Master Plan and found much to applaud.

Pay-as-you-go power distributor M-Kopa Solar on 24 March announced that it had connected over 20,000 off-grid homes in Uganda; it is now expanding its solar power distribution, targeting an additional 50,000 Ugandan homes by end-2015. M-Kopa Solar was launched in October 2012 in Kenya, where it now supplies over 150,000 homes, and began pilot operations in eastern Uganda in mid-2013. Consumer-friendly sales plans, serviced with regular payments via mobile phones (in Uganda provided by MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money, in Kenya by the fast-growing M-Pesa platform), are central to M-Kopa’s rapid growth.

Biomass producer Buchanan Renewables (BR) has been sold to an investor group, after a project to recycle old rubber trees and rejuvenate Liberia’s once world-leading rubber industry proved more challenging than expected. Stockholm-based Vattenfall and Swedish government-owned private equity company Swedfund backed the project to convert old rubber trees from the former Firestone plantation to woodchip. The woodchips were intended to fuel a 36MW biomass power plant in Monrovia, as well as being sold for export. But the scheme ran into difficulties and the Swedish backers pulled out last year.

Once the right economics and policies are put in place, the pace of advance made by the most successful renewable energy types, including wind power and solar photovoltaic (PV), can be exceptionally fast. Extrapolations of continent-wide trends by the new African Energy Live data (Live data) suggest that sustainable technologies can replace polluting (and, increasingly, often costlier) thermal solutions which include the diesel, heavy fuel oil and charcoal that hundreds of millions in sub-Saharan Africa have come to depend on.

Contracts must be concluded to show that renewable energy (RE) schemes are more than hot air, African Energy wrote last year. More solar and wind projects were being tendered in Morocco and South Africa’s new-found enthusiasm for RE would be confirmed if the much-anticipated first round of its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPP) was a success (AE 215/24).

Is it worth devoting time to understanding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) given that hard-nosed business people so often dismiss the motherhood-and-apple pie aspirations of big global initiatives? The 17 SDGs unveiled by the United Nations last September to replace the partially achieved Millennium Development Goals so far lack detail; the dedicated website (www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment) provides minimal information. However, the non-binding targets should gain substance as national government plans and expert recommendations appear in coming weeks. And the SDGs are emerging as a baseline for harmonising global action, as governments and international institutions work to implement the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP21)’s Paris agreement.

When most African governments struggle to fund even the most essential projects, costly new technologies may seem a luxury. But rethinking how they can be applied to energy networks can be a valuable exercise for policy-makers and investors: ‘disruptive technology’ can have far-reaching benefits, or prove a red herring for cash-strapped economies.

It is more than a whisper: international institutions and private equity (PE) investors are again exploring major hydroelectric power (HEP) deals, after years during which environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns made big dams a problematic issue for development finance institutions (DFI) and other potential investors.

What’s not to like for investors in President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s Egypt? The government’s International Monetary Fund-supported reform programme has greatly improved macroeconomic conditions; Egypt was a rare economy that reported some growth in Covid-plagued 2020, despite a huge downturn in tourism and other key revenue-earners. Its commitment to accelerating infrastructure development has sucked funds into global-scale solar and wind power programmes.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has won plaudits for his public determination to clean up South African governance, as underlined by his suspension of African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Ace Magashule. This clean-up has been supported by governance-focused civil society and media, and independent-minded members of the judiciary, but as African Energy’s South Africa power report pointed out, public confidence remains dangerously low after the ‘state capture’ years – and this negative environment is impacting across the economy.

Industry players continue to make bullish sounds about projects in Ethiopia, despite the murderous conflict pitting the Abiy Ahmed government against Tigrayan rebels that is putting some financing on hold and leading to geopolitical realignments in the region, writes Dan Marks