The Mission 300 initiative led by the African Development Bank Group and World Bank Group together with other development partners to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030 continues to gain momentum as more countries present energy compacts to achieve their national targets.
At a Mission 300 meeting in London, Burundi, Ghana, Mozambique, Togo and Zimbabwe became the latest countries to present national energy compacts outlining their ambitions to advance critical energy sector reforms required for the success of the initiative. The meeting, held on Wednesday, explored ways of mobilizing and leveraging additional private sector capital into energy access across Africa.
The first cohort of 12 countries presented their compacts at the Africa Energy Summit in January 2025, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was the first continent-wide convening on Mission 300, which produced the Dar es Salaam Energy Declaration, committing continental leaders to the implementation of their energy compacts.
President of the African Development Bank Group, Dr Akinwumi Adesina told the meeting that Mission 300 initiative was building on the Bank Group’s remarkable progress in the last decade, which has seen the number of connected Africans grow by more than a third.
“From the very beginning of my Presidency in 2015, I made energy access a core priority by launching the New Deal on Energy for Africa. At the time, only 39 percent of the continent had access to electricity. By 2023, that figure had risen to 53 percent,” Adesina said, to an audience of heads of multilateral development banks, senior government Ministers from across Africa, representatives of the private sector and development partners.
“Over the past 10 years, the African Development Bank Group has provided direct electricity access to over 28 million people, and helped the continent increase its installed power capacity by another 12,000 megawatts,” he added.
The Bank Group head restated the goal of Mission 300 saying, “Enough is enough. The time for half measures is over… Africa cannot prosper in the dark. We must deliver universal access to electricity for Africa.”
He saluted the World Bank for its resolute partnership with the African Development Bank, and also thanked other partners that have committed financing towards Mission 300, including the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, International Finance Corporation, Islamic Development Bank, French Development Agency, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the OPEC Fund.
Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, said, “Without the private sector we will not create jobs. Our job is to enable the private sector invest responsibly and successfully, to create jobs.”
Panel discussions that followed emphasized the role of the private sector in achieving Mission 300 goals, urging sustained political will from the public sector to create the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive.
Speakers at the meeting—which included technical roundtables on the deployment of debt, equity, local currency financing, securitization, and guarantees—also stressed capacity building, greater coordination between public and private sectors, as well as increased focus on creating and deploying innovative financing mechanisms.
In remarks to close the event, Vice President of the African Development Bank Group for Power, Energy, Climate, and Green Growth, Dr Kevin Kariuki, praised the growing momentum of the initiative. He noted that by September 2025, the entire batch of twenty national energy compacts from the second cohort will be ready for adoption—showcasing “collective commitment to reforms, financial resource mobilisation and results.”
Kariuki described Mission 300 as “Africa’s most ambitious and coordinated effort to deliver universal energy access at scale. It will only succeed through new capital, new partners and new solutions.”
Source - AfDB