ACCRA, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Over 50 million people in Africa have been connected to electricity since July 2023 under the Mission 300 initiative, the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank (AfDB) said in a joint policy brief on Friday.
"Over 50 million people have been connected to electricity since this initiative launched and began tracking results in July 2023," said the brief. "It is just the beginning."
According to World Bank Director of Infrastructure for West Africa Franz Drees-Gross and AfDB Director for Energy Financial Solutions, Policy and Regulations Wale Shonibare, the initiative, led by the World Bank Group and the AfDB to connect 300 million people across Africa to electricity by 2030, has just reached a remarkable milestone.
The two banks explained that Mission 300 is an initiative to accelerate, coordinate, and scale electricity access in Africa across both newly approved operations and existing portfolios of active investments, reforms, and partnerships, irrespective of when the underlying operations were approved.
The policy brief, however, emphasized that the goal of providing electricity access to 300 million people by 2030 cannot be achieved solely through projects approved after the initiative's launch date.
According to the banks, large-scale energy infrastructure projects take years to begin delivering results, and hence, they stressed the need to engage the full portfolio of available investments while mobilizing new financing, policy reforms, country compacts, and implementation support needed to accelerate progress.
National energy compacts, which have been adopted by 36 countries, are accelerating electricity access by addressing sectoral bottlenecks that have hampered the faster delivery of existing projects and the development of new ones, said the brief. ■
