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Accelerating investments in power in sub-Saharan Africa

Nature Energy volume 2, Article number: 17005 (2017) Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 06 March 2017

Private sector investments in African power generation play an increasingly important role in addressing the continent's electricity supply shortages. Our analysis of investment trends in sub-Saharan Africa reveals some key success factors.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has a severe shortage of power: currently, excluding South Africa, it has less generating capacity installed than Sweden's 36 GW (ref. 1). The continent also has the lowest per capita electricity consumption globally, and is the region set to see the lowest rate of improvement in the number of people living without access to electricity2,3. It is estimated that more than 900 GW of new capacity will need to be installed by 2050 to meet electricity demand — in scenarios that do not even assume universal access4.

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Figure 1: Investments in power generation.
Figure 2: Total investment by IPPs and by DFIs.
Figure 3: Countries with the most independent power project capacity in SSA.
Figure 4: Comparison of price outcomes for medium-speed diesel and solar PV in SSA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anton Eberhard and Katharine Gratwick are at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa.,

    Anton Eberhard & Katharine Gratwick

  2. Elvira Morella and Pedro Antmann are at the World Bank, 1818 H Street Northwest, Washington DC 20433, USA.,

    Elvira Morella & Pedro Antmann

Authors
  1. Anton Eberhard
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  2. Katharine Gratwick
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  3. Elvira Morella
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  4. Pedro Antmann
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Correspondence to Anton Eberhard.

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Eberhard, A., Gratwick, K., Morella, E. et al. Accelerating investments in power in sub-Saharan Africa. Nat Energy 2, 17005 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.5

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