Renewable Energy Development in Africa

Part of the Energy Innovation and Digital Technology project

Africa is experiencing an annual 2.7 percent rate of growth in population and will become home to 2.5 billion people by 2050, with 80 percent of them located in sub-Saharan Africa. The continent has already experienced the devastating effects of climate change. According to the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, climate change—including climate-related extreme weather events, food insecurity, heatwaves, and the prevalence of climate sensitivity diseases—could put billions of Africans at risk by the end of the century. Although Africa currently accounts for less than 2 percent of cumulative global emissions and represents just 6 percent of global energy consumption, rapid population growth, urbanization, and economic development could drive its future contribution to cumulative emissions. On top of that, the predominant energy sources used in the region are carbon intensive fossil fuels

A rapid shift to renewable energy can help Africa to improve sustainability and accelerate economic transformation. Africa has abundant renewable energy resources that can be tapped to meet increasing energy demand, foster economic transformation, and promote environmental sustainability. The Africa Union’s “Agenda 2063” initiative creates a nexus between renewable developments and economic transformation.

In 2021, Africa’s generation of renewable energy constituted only 2 percent of the world’s total output. Additionally, Africa’s level of access to electricity remains the lowest of all regions. In SSA, 570 million people live without electricity.

In some parts of Africa, renewable generation capacity has been installed without sufficient financing to build or connect it with transmission and distribution infrastructure, leading to suboptimal curtailments of generation capacity and financial losses. In addition, mismatches between national industrial development policies and energy planning often forestall rapid progress.

This research will focus on Africa’s abundant renewable resources and how they can be developed to achieve energy access for all and to foster environmentally sustainable economic development. The research will examine the complex host of existing barriers to renewable energy investment, generation, and transmission. Multicriteria policy indicators, including secondary sources and interviews with stakeholders, will be used to analyze and to improve understanding of the current policy barriers and institutional gaps in individual country contexts, with an eye to identifying policy adjustments and improvements that can aid in more rapid development of renewable energy in SSA.