By Dada Olusegun
Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu left Abuja for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on January 26th to attend the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit. His mission to Tanzania was straightforward – to further galvanise efforts, multilateral support and investments aimed at increasing electricity access to Nigerians. The Misson 300 initiative itself is aimed at expanding electricity access to 300 million people throughout Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.
Why is the Mission 300 Initiative important to Nigeria?
To start with, Africa currently has over 600 million people who lack access to electricity, which is close to half of the population in the continent. Alarmingly, this figure represents 83% of the global electricity access deficit. Nigeria on its own has around 86 million people without access to electricity, making it the country with the highest number of people in the world without electricity access, followed closely by DR Congo. Therefore, any initiative whether global or regional with the objective to increase access to electricity to those without access needs to feature Nigeria.
That Nigeria has this huge number of people without access to electricity is down to several systemic challenges bedevilling the power sector in Nigeria which revolve around grossly inadequate investment in the sector over several decades. However, President Bola Tinubu since his assumption of office in 2023 has stepped up efforts to ensure that the barriers holding down the power sector are gradually dismantled to pave the way for increased investments into the electricity value chain.
Today, the federal government has put in place a legal framework known as the Electricity Act 2023 which has paved the way for the decentralisation of the power sector, allowing subnational governments to participate more in the electricity market regulation. Also, cost reflective tariffs have been applied to targeted consumers, which has made it more attractive for the private sector to invest more in the sector. The immediate result has been a drastic improvement in power supply to major load centres across the country.
The Tinubu administration is also accelerating the implementation of the Siemens deal with phase 1 of the deal about to commence following the completion of the pilot phase. Both the pilot phase and phase 1 of the Siemens deal revolve around improving the wheeling capacity of the TCN and ensuring grid stability. This is essential for increased access to electricity by Nigerians. However, only the Siemens deal cannot in itself expand electricity access to unelectrified communities across the country. This is where the Mission 300 Initiative becomes very crucial to Nigeria’s power solution mix.
What does Mission 300 offer Nigeria’s power sector?
The Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit was not just a gathering of leaders of the participating countries but a critical platform for collaboration and commitment to unite efforts of countries and development partners to confront one of Africa’s most pressing challenges – access to energy. Heads of State from 12 African countries were part of the Dar es Salaam declaration which include Nigeria, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia.
These countries together account for 301.7 million people without electricity representing around 50% of the global total. This is why international multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank as well as donors/partners such as the Rockefeller Foundation decided to embark on this Mission 300 Initiative. The Dar es Salaam summit therefore provided a platform for African governments, the World Bank, AfDB, donor agencies and private sector players in the power sector to cement a powerful partnership that will deliver access to electricity to 300 million people in 2030.
As part of Nigeria’s push to increase access to electricity for its citizens, President Tinubu at the summit listed some of the programmes for which funding approvals have already been secured by Nigeria from the World Bank Group and the AfDB. They include the following:
1. $1.1 billion AfDB financing, which is expected to provide electricity for an additional 5 million people in Nigeria by the end of 2026.
2. A $200 million commitment of AfDB in the Nigeria Electrification Project to provide electricity for 500,000 people by the end of 2025.
3. A planned $700 million investment by the AfDB in the Nigeria Desert to Power programme.
4. A planned $500 million facility by the AfDB to Nigeria for the Nigeria-Grid Battery Energy Storage System, which will provide electricity for an additional two million people.
5. $750 million support from the World Bank for expanding Nigeria’s distributed energy access via mini-grids and standalone solar systems that will provide access to power to 16.2 million people.
At the Tanzania Summit, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) equally announced that it has committed $70 million in private sector funding to five Nigerian Renewable Electricity Service Companies (RESCOs) under the Nigeria Distributed Access Through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) programme.
Cumulatively, these financing commitments by the AfDB, the World Bank Group and IFC will result in access to electricity for at least 30 million Nigerians who currently lack access. This would be a very significant milestone in Nigeria’s quest to achieve universal access to electricity for all Nigerians by the end of this decade.
Tinubu Unveiled Nigeria’s National Energy Compact
During the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit in Tanzania, President Bola Tinubu through the Minister of Power presented Nigeria’s National Energy Compact, underscoring the commitment of the Nigerian government to provide reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity to all of Nigeria’s unelectrified population by 2030. The Compact contained Nigeria’s Declaration of Commitment to the Mission 300 objectives, an overview of Nigeria’s energy sector highlighting the current status and challenges as well as a list of ongoing and committed projects in the electricity sector in Nigeria.
A look at Annex 1 in the Compact shows 11 ongoing/committed projects being financed by Development Partners including the World Bank, AfDB, European Union and USAID. They include:
1. Nigeria Power Sector Recovery Operations with a funding commitment of $1.5 billion from the World Bank.
2. Nigeria Distribution Sector Recovery Program with a funding commitment of $500 million from the World Bank.
3. The Electricity Transmission Project with $486 million in funding from the World Bank.
4. Nigeria Energy Access and Clean Energy Transition Program funded by the World Bank with $5 million.
5. Nigeria Electrification Project with $350 million funding from the World Bank.
6. Nigeria Distributed Access Through Renewable Energy Scale-up with $750 million expected World Bank funding and $1.1 billion from the private sector. This particular project alone is expected to extend new electricity access via mini-grids and standalone solar systems to 16.2 million and improved access via interconnected mini-grids to about 1.3 million people.
7. $200 million funding from AfDB for the Nigeria Electrification Project.
8. $252 million in funding from the AfDB for phase 1 of the Nigeria Transmission Expansion Plan.
9. The Nigeria Power Sector Program with $109 million in funding from USAID.
10. The Empower Nigeria project to be funded by USAID with $75 million.
11. The EU Solar for Health Program is expected to provide electricity connections to about 250 healthcare centres in Nigeria by the end of 2028.
Apart from these ongoing/committed projects, the Nigeria Energy Compact also revealed a lot about where our electricity value chain currently stands. This is very crucial when it comes to planning reforms and setting targets and shows how serious President Bola Tinubu is to solving the electricity question. Below are some of Nigeria’s current reality in the electricity value chain:
1. Nigeria has a grid generation installed capacity of 13,625MW out of which around 5,800MW is available.
2. On average, 75% of this available grid generation capacity comes from thermal sources (gas) while 24.3% is from hydro with only 0.3% coming from solar. The energy transition objective of the Tinubu administration is to increase the amount of grid electricity generated from renewable sources especially hydro to at least 50% of total generation. This is where the Mambilla hydropower project comes in.
3. In the transmission segment, Nigeria has 5,530km of 330KV transmission lines and 6,800km of 132KV transmission lines. Nigeria’s 330KV substations have a combined available transfer capacity of 10,994MVA while the 132KV substations have a combined available transfer capacity of 15,360MVA.
4. In the distribution network, the total medium voltage lines in Nigeria is 12,300km while the low voltage lines that supply electricity to most end users are 224,838km in total.
5. The average end-user tariff per kWh in Nigeria is N69/kWh.
6. An estimated $1.5 billion was expended as an electricity subsidy in 2024 due to the absence of full cost-reflectivity in the electricity pricing. In 2025 however, the projected electricity subsidy spending is $600 million.
7. There are 5.84 million metered electricity customers and 7.32 million unmetered customers.
From the foregoing realities highlighted in the Compact, it is easier for the Nigerian government to make a correct diagnosis of the challenges preventing universal access to electricity in Nigeria and plan ways to bridge that gap. Liquidity issues have always been the major bottleneck in the power sector, which is in part due to the absence of cost-reflective tariffs across the board and partly due to the non-Metering of millions of electricity consumers leading to revenue loss. During a presentation on behalf of Nigeria, the Chief Technical Adviser to the Minister of Power, Adedayo Olowoniyi highlighted ongoing efforts to increase liquidity in the system through migrating more customers to Band A and fast-tracking Metering of all electricity customers to ensure better collection of revenue by the Discos.
It is also on the back of these data sets that President Bola Tinubu announced during the summit that Nigeria will require an investment of $23.2 billion for last-mile electrification, including contributions from the public and private sectors. These targeted investments are not entirely for national grid electrification projects, a substantial portion involves off-grid solutions such as standalone solar projects that deliver affordable and renewable energy to many isolated rural communities in the north as well as mini-grids to serve some urban centres.
One major thing that President Bola Tinubu’s trip to Tanzania has succeeded in doing is that for the first time in our recent history, it is crystal clear that Nigeria is vigorously pursuing a comprehensive mix of reforms and solutions to tackle our electricity quagmire and making the environment in the power sector more attractive to private sector-led investments. Crucially, development partners like the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank are also showing greater enthusiasm and willingness to finance many power projects in Nigeria. This has not always been so!