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Kwama Energy’s Ilute solar project reached financial close in January as what its chairman Sipho Phiri calls Africa’s first non-recourse merchant power station. He spoke to ENN about why bankability, not sunlight or wind, is the real constraint on Zambian power, and why proving one model matters more than any single plant.

A four-hour test announced last November ran the region’s grids as a single synchronous network for the first time, and the power pool behind it wants that permanent by mid-year. The World Economic Forum’s Rakesh Bohra and Justine Roche set out the reforms, and the $36 billion pipeline, asking investors to pay attention.

Volatile prices and a shifting geopolitical map have not cooled Africa’s appetite for gas. At AEF, Ghana’s Sulemana Abubakari, Genesis Energy’s Melissa Sikwila and Siemens Energy’s Marcus Nelle argued that gas remains the baseload an industrialising continent leans on, and that the harder work is building the value chain to use it at home.

The capital to build Africa’s energy system is partly already on the continent, held in its pension and sovereign funds. At AEF, the Public Investment Corporation’s Zama Khanyile and the Eskom pension fund’s Phathutshedzo Madogo set out why that money struggles to reach early-stage projects, and what would change it.

Africa’s new generation is outrunning the lines that carry it, and governments are short of balance sheet to build more. At AEF, Africa50’s Moshood Abolade and Nabil Saïmi and Kenya’s Kefa Seda set out a privately financed, programmatic model for the grid, proven in Chile, Brazil, India and Peru.

The proposed Batoka Gorge Hydro-Electric Scheme has moved into a new phase, with Zambia and Zimbabwe seeking experienced development partners to deliver a project that could add significant power capacity to the region. Speaking at AEF, the Zambezi River Authority and Southern African Power Pool highlighted the need for investment to turn the Zambezi’s existing potential into electricity for a market facing continued supply challenges.

Raxio Group is entering Tanzania and has lifted its funding pool to $380 million, with fresh capital from its main shareholders Meridiam and the Roha Group. Each facility the operator builds draws power around the clock at industrial scale, the kind of demand that pulls generation and grid investment in behind it.

South Africa’s IPP Office has delivered 1,164km of new transmission under the first phase of its programme, and at AEF its head of strategy Niveshen Govender and the electricity ministry’s Mvumikazi Vimbani set out what scaling the transmission development plan demands next, from procurement to the engineers who make it real.

Fifty million people gained electricity under Mission 300 and another 250 million wait on a deadline of 2030. At AEF, Ignite’s Yariv Cohen, Sun King’s Radhika Thakkar and the Mission 300 Accelerator’s Andrew Herscowitz argued that the distributed energy sector’s task has shifted from proving the model to scaling it.

Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Djibouti, Gabon, Rwanda and Uganda signed national energy agreements at AEF, carrying Africa’s largest electrification drive deeper into Central and East Africa, while the AfDB’s Daniel Schroth pointed to a partnership that now counts more than thirty development finance institutions.