Africa has received a €15.5 billion financing commitment aimed at expanding renewable energy generation across the continent.
The pledge signals renewed external confidence in Africa’s energy future, but it also exposes a deeper tension between resource ownership and energy outcomes.
The continent holds some of the world’s strongest solar corridors, large untapped wind potential, and extensive hydro capacity. Yet electricity supply remains uneven and insufficient.
Power shortages persist across major economies, constraining industry, limiting digital infrastructure, and shaping daily life for hundreds of millions of people.
This gap is not caused by a lack of resources. It is the result of how those resources are positioned in global systems.
While households and businesses across Africa struggle with unreliable power, the continent continues to export the building blocks of the global energy transition.
Lithium from Zimbabwe, cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and graphite from East Africa are shipped abroad to support battery production, electric vehicles, and grid storage projects in wealthier markets.
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The contradiction is structural.
Africa supplies inputs. Other regions capture finished systems, industrial capacity, and energy security. The value chain remains external, even as extraction happens locally.
The €15.5 billion commitment has the potential to alter that pattern, but only if it is applied with intent. Capital alone does not generate power.
Transmission lines, grid stability, local manufacturing, and long-term maintenance determine whether energy projects improve daily life or remain isolated assets.
There is also the question of ownership. Financing that prioritizes export-oriented projects or externally controlled infrastructure risks repeating the same imbalance seen in the minerals trade. Energy systems shape economic power. Who controls them matters as much as how much money is committed.
For Africa, the central issue is not ambition. It is structure.
Renewable energy on the continent must be treated as economic infrastructure, not just climate signaling. Power enables data centers, manufacturing, water systems, healthcare, and education. Without reliable electricity, digital growth and industrial development stall, regardless of mineral wealth or climate pledges.
The €15.5 billion pledge creates an opening. Whether it becomes a turning point depends on how directly it addresses Africa’s internal energy needs, how much capacity remains within national grids, and how firmly value creation is anchored on the continent.
By Thuita Gatero, Managing Editor, Africa Digest News. He specializes in conversations around data centers, AI, cloud infrastructure, and energy.
