Publication - The Renewable Energy Transition in Africa: Powering Access, Resilience and Prosperity

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Title

The Renewable Energy Transition in Africa: Powering Access, Resilience and Prosperity

Publisher

IRENA, GIZ, KfW

Author

IRENA, GIZ, KFW

Published in

March 2021

Abstract

Over the coming decades, the countries on the African continent have the opportunity to address two fundamental energy challenges. First, they can achieve universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services by 2030, as set out in the United Nation´s Sustainable Development Goal 7, thereby improving the lives of hundreds of millions of their citizens. At the same time, African countries can harness the power of renewable energy, which has emerged as a technologically viable and economically attractive alternative to fossil fuels, and avoid being locked into a dependency on fossil fuel energy.

This study focuses on the electricity sector, which is responsible for the largest share of energy-related emissions in Africa.

Additionally, in the long run, building robust, green electricity sectors across the continent will also enable the decarbonisation of energy end-use sectors, such as transport and industry. The technical and commercial solutions required to provide universal access to reliable and affordable electricity from sustainable power systems across Africa are at hand. This study explores the existing structural barriers to such a renewable energy transition on the continental and regional levels, and lays out how African governments and their development partners can address these in order to enable a sustainable energy future. Country snapshots provide insights into the prospects for energy transition in 13 selected African countries, along with detailed deep dives into the transformational potential in 5 of these countries.

Seizing the opportunity for and benefits of a renewable energy transition will require political will for sector reform, including a coherent, unified approach to the promotion of renewable energy and energy access, and an effective approach to dealing with the political-economic and distributional challenges such transformations engender. This study outlines a pathway for African governments, continental and regional organisations, and their development partners to join forces in a new, concerted approach to achieving a comprehensive energy transition across Africa, powering energy access, resilience and prosperity.

The study was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and is a joint product of the International Renewable Energy Agency

(IRENA), the German Development Bank (KfW) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

URL

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Admin:
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• Energy Access

• Renewable Energy

• Other