World Bank says $50 billion committed to Africa power plans

More than $50 billion has been committed to an ambitious plan to halve the number of people without access to electricity in Africa, according to the World Bank, its biggest backer. The program, named Mission 300 because of its goal to bring electricity to 300 million people by 2030, has delivered power to 44 million people since it was officially announced at a conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in January last year. There “is a pipeline of tens of millions more by the end of 2026,” the World Bank said in a statement.

Committed finance includes concessional loans from both its own resources and the African Development Bank, as well as money from other development finance institutions and the private sector, it said. The program is a drive to break one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest impediments to growth: Almost half of its population, or 570 million people, have no access to electricity. That limits education, curbs employment and cuts productivity in a region where 70% of the population are younger than 30.

Under the program, 30 African countries have put together so-called compacts, plans on what’s needed to bring electricity to their people and how to fund and achieve that aim. READ:Mozambique joins Mission 300 Initiative – AIM report The World Bank, with the Rockefeller Foundation, has helped some governments set up so-called Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units, including by financing the deployment of technical experts to advise on the programs. The Rockefeller Foundation on Thursday announced that it will deploy a further $10 million to that program.

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Working with the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, to which it allocates funds, the money will be used to assist Liberia and Malawi. Earlier funding was used to assist Ivory Coast, Senegal and Nigeria.

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