Tracking the Progress of Universal Access to Electricity in Africa: Status quo, Challenges and Opportunities

Africa is highly endowed with immense energy resources yet the continent lags in terms of electricity access rates. The current electricity status shows large disparities amongst regions, countries as well as between urban and rural populations in Africa. Consequently, the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda for 2030 and the African Union (AU) 2063 Agenda has placed the electricity access problem in a broader context by integrating Africa's political, economic and social challenges to improve electrification rates. Using the Political, Economic and Social (PES) model, challenges in: energy policy measures, investment/finance and rural electrification are identified as impeding factors to achieve universal electricity access by 2030 in Africa. The North Africa, Southern Africa and to some extend Eastern Africa tremendous progress in attaining the global targets towards universal access to electricity are living examples of hope. Thus, regional power integration presents an optimal platform for facilitating coordinated and rapid access to electricity in Africa with many more opportunities like electricity trade and markets for accelerating sustainable development.