Honourable Charles Umehai

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.

Africa's largest electrification drive set out to bring power to 300 million people by 2030. At the opening of the Africa Energy Forum 2026 in Cape Town, the Presidents of the World Bank and the African Development Bank used a joint video message to mark how far it has already travelled, and what is carrying it.

ATIDI has spent a year behind energy projects across the continent and intends to widen that support, its senior underwriter Annabelle Buzingo told AEF, through greater underwriting capacity, more partners and solutions built for renewable infrastructure, with transmission and local institutions rising up the agenda.

Maud Watelet of Adjuva Partners begins a second term as President of the Alliance for Renewable Electrification, elected at its 25 June General Meeting alongside four board members, with a 2026 mandate that runs from first-time connections and productive use through to commercial installations and grid integration.

Clean cooking reaches fewer headlines than generation and touches more lives. At AEF, South Africa's Samantha Graham-Maré and the World Health Organisation's Heather Adair-Rohani argued that it is a matter of health and dignity, and that progress should be counted in households reached rather than commitments made.

Africa is moving to capture more value from its critical minerals. At Africa Energy Forum 2026, ministers and analysts argued that local processing, refining and supply-chain development are now central to the continent's industrial strategy.