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Africa’s bright future: 300 million people, one mission

Getting to 300 million people by 2030 is going to take stepped-up engagement by development partners. Franz Drees-Gross, a Director of Infrastructure in the World Bank’s Africa West and Central region, highlighted this as one of the three pillars of Mission 300.

Drees-Gross addressed delegates of Enlit Africa 2025, which took place in Cape Town last month.

He said the World Bank has pledged to finance $30 billion worth of investments between now and 2030 and that forms part of the first pillar: putting more money to work towards the Mission 300 goal.

“The second pillar involves reform. All over Africa, countries are recognising that it’s not just a matter of money. It’s a matter of reforming sectors and utilities. So the National Energy Compacts that 12 countries prepared and presented in Dar es Salaam, and a further group of 20 countries is currently preparing. All cover reforms in five different areas.

“The first area involves generation. How to bring down generation costs so that the cost that end-users see for their electricity is as affordable as possible.”

Drees-Gross said there are two main ways this can be done. One is switching to lower-cost sources of generation, including renewable energy. The second is procuring those sources of energy in the best possible way, which is through a competitive process rather than single sourcing.

Mission 300: Regional integration for affordable power

The second chapter of all these National Energy Compacts revolves around regional integration. “The idea is that we can connect all the countries within the West African Power Pool, the Central African Power Pool, and the East and Southern African Power Pools to the cheapest sources of supply.

“So even countries that aren’t endowed with cheap sources of generation can always import cheap power from their neighbours.”

Wale Shonibare, Director responsible for Energy Financial Solutions, Policy and Regulations at the African Development Bank (AfDB), said since the launch of Mission 300 last year, they’ve made a significant amount of progress.

Mission 300 is not a one-time project and progress is being made

“In January, the African Heads of State met at the first-ever Africa Energy Summit. At the end of that summit, they signed the Dar es Salaam Declaration. Out of 54 African countries, 48 of them were signatories to the Dar es Salaam Declaration.

“And following on from that, the African Union Summit endorsed the declaration. This shows the level of political alignment, the political will to change the paradigm.

“And this is why Mission 300 is so important. It is a transformative platform that will bring together governments, development partners, and, importantly, the private sectors and other civil society,” said Shonibare.

He shared that since then, countries have drawn up their own national energy compacts.

“At Dar es Salaam, we had the first 12 countries who endorsed their national energy compacts. We’ve been working on 20 more countries who will be endorsing national energy compacts at a meeting of Heads of State in September. This is real progress,” he said.

Shonibare added they are also mobilising support for compact delivering and monitoring units for each country that will be placed at the level of the presidency or key ministries in order to coordinate this effort.

“So what we’re saying is this is just not a one-time project. This is an initiative that is going to run until 2030. And this platform is going to make sure that we’re monitoring implementation and driving progress in order to achieve our objectives,” he explained.