Energy Sub-Saharan Africa

“An Affordable and Sustainable Energy System for Sub-Saharan Africa” (Energy Sub-Saharan Africa) is a five-year (2019-2024) programme funded by the European Union that is designed to support selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa to improve their energy data management and long-term energy planning.

The IEA has been working in and with African countries on energy issues for more than two decades and in recent years, the agency has substantially expanded its engagement with African regional partners and countries to enhance institutional engagement and technical capabilities.

The following 10 countries participated in the programme: Benin, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia. The long-term objective of the programme is to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the selected countries through the transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient energy sector, while delivering universal and affordable energy access to all.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy future matters for the world, due in part to:

• The region’s young and rapidly growing population,
• high projected urbanisation rates
• strong economic growth trends
• and vast energy and critical mineral resources.

Sub-Saharan Africa will play an increasingly important role in shaping the global energy landscape and achieving global climate goals.

Despite this, sub-Saharan Africa is the least understood region in the global energy system. Key barriers include a lack of basic energy demand and supply statistics due to institutional limitations and the limited application of energy modelling and analysis in policy design, market analysis and investment decisions.

Given the region’s increasing significance in the international energy arena, it is more critical than ever to gain a clearer picture of the energy sector developments taking place in the region and to ensure that energy policymaking is evidence-based and data-driven.

Reliable data is essential for planning, monitoring and evaluating policies and investments in energy access, renewable energy and energy efficiency. Energy data is the bedrock of evidence-based and data-driven policymaking, and reliable data is critical for measuring progress against targets and metrics, such as SDG 7. The IEA develops and makes freely available comparable, reliable, country-level energy statistics for sub-Saharan African countries, with particular efforts made to release enhanced data for the countries participating in the programme. The IEA will ensure the data availability beyond the duration of the programme.

Africa – which will be home to one-fifth of the world’s population by 2030 – is set to play an increasingly important role in the global energy ecosystem. Across the region, demand for energy is growing, but modern energy use per capita remains among the lowest in the world, despite ample energy resources across the continent. Africa accounts for just 6% of global energy use and less than 3% of global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Explore the data

Explore country data: Benin, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia.

“An Affordable and Sustainable Energy System for sub-Saharan Africa” programme is designed to support energy access for all citizens in sub-Saharan Africa in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The programme builds on the IEA’s previous work in Africa and aims to support policy- and decision-makers, energy authorities and other relevant stakeholders to make evidence-based and data-driven policies for sustainable energy sector development.

Overall, the programme aims to catalyse sustainable and inclusive economic growth and universal energy access in selected sub-Saharan African countries through accelerating the development of low-carbon and climate-resilient energy systems in the region. The expected outcomes of the programme, subject to data availability and national circumstances, are as follows:

• Improved data for tracking and monitoring sustainable energy transitions in selected African countries.
• Enhanced the capabilities of national authorities in selected countries for energy data collection, management, and modelling in order to improve policy formulation, energy sector planning and investment decision-making.
  

The IEA Africa University is an online platform, created as part of Phase I, seeking to share knowledge with energy practitioners in Africa on a range of energy topics each month in English and French. The topics include:

• Relevant findings for Africa from key IEA reports, including the World Energy Outlook 2020 & 2021, Renewables 2020, Oil 2021, Efficiency 2021, Global Energy Review 2021, Critical Minerals 2021
• Africa-focused IEA analyses: Clean Energy Transitions in Sahel, Climate Impacts on African hydropower
• Expert sessions on solid biofuels with presentation by the IEA and partner (UN FAO)
• Practical sessions on IEA tools such as the Weather for Energy Tracker