President Lazarus Chakwera says the just ended Mission 300 Africa Energy summit in Tanzania is an enabler to achieving Malawi’s aspirations of providing electricity to all communities that government already started.
Chakwera said this at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe on arrival from Tanzania where he attended the World Bank mission 300 Africa Energy summit.
The Summit was convened with support from the World Bank Group and.the African Development Bank and other partners to advance Mission 300’s initiative to scale up energy access and accelerate the continent’s clean energy transition.
At the historic Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit, African heads of state and government, joined 1,000 business leaders, and development partners in Dar es Salaam to spark collective action on one singular goal: to expand access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030.
This bold vision, known as Mission 300, will halve the nearly 600 million Africans currently living without electricity with knock-on effects of stimulating development and job creation.
The landmark gathering, hosted by the United Republic of Tanzania, African Union, African Development Bank Group (AfDB), and World Bank Group resulted in three key outcomes:
The Dar es Salaam Energy Declaration, outlining commitments and practical actions from African governments to reform the energy sector;
The first set of National Energy Compacts, which will serve as blueprints with country-specific targets and timelines for implementation of critical reforms.
In the first phase, 12 countries will present their energy compacts: Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia.
Other African countries are expected to develop their compacts in subsequent phases; and a raft of pledges by multilateral development institutions in support of electrification and clean cooking efforts across the continent.
The Islamic Development Bank pledged USD 2.65 billion, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank pledged USD 1.5 billion, the OPEC Fund pledged USD 1 billion with additional financing to follow, and Agence Française de Développement pledged USD 1 billion.
Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) together with The Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) are supporting this unprecedented collaboration between the AfDB and the World Bank Group to address Africa’s electricity access gap.
Specifically, SEforALL will help the AfDB and World Bank deliver Mission 300, alongside supporting the organization’s focus on reducing energy poverty.
The scope includes implementing programmes across Africa, developing energy transition plans and supporting data-driven energy access planning in Mission 300 compact countries, which will help create the market and regulatory readiness needed to drive new energy connections.
To stem the impacts of the global rise in interest rates across Africa’s economies, SEforALL will also collaborate with partners to develop innovative financing instruments to enable private participation in local currency financing platforms with an aim to create a new pan-African local currency mechanism that will not only protect local investors from the risks associated with the volatility of currency markets, but also will lay the groundwork to unlock currently unavailable sources of capital for developers across Africa.
Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, said: “SEforALL recognizes its role, along with that of The Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, as that of an enabler to the bold Mission 300 initiative in support of the World Bank and the African Development Bank; and as such, the commitment of support for our work is both a strong and clear indication of The Rockefeller Foundation’s commitment to ending energy poverty; and taking the big bets needed to advance action at the scale and pace needed to meet the SDG 7 Goal by 2030.”
The commitments made by the continent’s leaders and partners at this landmark event are expected to continue at the SEforALL Global Forum taking place in Bridgetown, Barbados from 12 – 13 March, where African and global leaders will continue to monitor progress and drive further ambition on transforming the lives of millions of Africans through universal energy access.
