President Taye Aspires for Lofty Universal Electricity by 2028

Feb 2 , 2025

The government has set an aggressive goal to achieve universal electricity access by 2028, which requires electrifying 3.4 million households annually. The Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania concluded with a focus on coordinated strategies to address the continent's energy crisis with President Taye Atsqeselassie noting that despite achieving a 54pc electricity access rate, 60 million Ethiopians still lack access. Over 571 million people in Africa are still without electricity, representing 83pc of the global population lacking access. Financial commitments to address the issue included a joint 48-billion-dollar pledge from the World Bank and African Development Bank, and a new one-billion-dollar fund from the IFC for decentralized renewable energy projects. France pledged over one billion dollars toward universal access to electricity and an additional 10 million dollars to the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA). Several other nations also contributed to SEFA, including Denmark, the UK and Spain. It was also relayed that African countries suffer from a clean cooking crisis which causes approximately 600,000 deaths annually and health and economic costs of 800 billion dollars annually. The summit ended with the Dar es Salaam Declaration which commits governments to reforms in utility management and procurement transparency while also calling for private sector participation through supportive regulations and innovative financing. The declaration will be presented for continent-wide adoption at the African Union Summit in February.