If 2025 is remembered for one thing on the African continent, it should be progress on the energy agenda. But it was also a year in which that progress began to move in two different directions - and only one is likely to prove truly transformational.
The first source of progress relates to Mission 300 - an initiative that was formally launched in April 2024 but shifted from ambition to implementation in January 2025, as governments and partners confronted a harder question: not just how many people could be connected to electricity, but whether Africa's power systems could sustain themselves financially and support productive economic activity.
Mission 300's Dar es Salaam Energy Declaration, endorsed by 48 countries, committed governments and partners to accelerate electricity access for 300 million people by 2030 through power-sector reforms, country-led energy compacts, and crucially the mobilisation of private investment. The declaration acknowledged a hard reality: public finance and donor funding alone will not deliver electrification at scale.
