Finance minister touts collaboration to address electricity challenges

Dar es Salaam. The Minister for Finance Mwigulu Nchemba on Monday urged African countries to collaborate with development partners, commercial banks and impact investors as one of the strategies to address electricity challenges in the continent.

Dr Nchemba was speaking during the Mission 300 Energy Summit which has attracted 2,600 participants from both within and outside Tanzania.

The two-day event is also expected to gather 24 African Heads of State, hosted by President Samia Suluhu Hassan, and representatives from 21 other African nations, and leaders of six international organisations, who are discussing energy and electricity challenges in the continent.

“To address the electricity access challenges, we must strive and put together our technical abilities and financial resources. We must prioritise financing energy sectors,” said Dr Nchemba during one of the sessions.

Electricity is an essential economic driver but in Africa, about 600 million people are reported to live without its access.

The World Bank Group is partnering with the African Development Bank and other partners on Mission 300, an ambitious initiative to connect 300 million people to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.

Mission 300 aims to accelerate the pace of electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa while ensuring that the transition to more diversified and cleaner sources of energy meets growing demand, brings economic growth, and creates jobs.

Efforts are also focused on investing in generation, transmission, distribution, regional interconnection, and sector reform to ensure quality, reliability, and affordability of power supply.

“We call upon all financial institutions to be at the forefront of this mobilisation effort. Both local and international financial institutions must play a crucial role in providing capital necessary for energy projects to achieve our desired targets,” said Dr Nchemba.

“We need to harness the power of development partners, commercial banks, and impact investors to finance large-scale infrastructure projects as well as the centralised renewable energy solutions,” he added.

According to him, financial energy is an infrastructural project critical not only in bridging the access to energy and electricity gap but also to facilitate economic transformation and reducing poverty across the continent.

International development partners have a role to facilitate access to energy by mobilising concessional financing, investment to the energy projects, guarantees and blended financing to attract private sector investment.

The partners can also facilitate green bonds and climate financing to support transition to renewable energy.

Development partners can also influence policies and support infrastructure development and foster collaborations.

“By forging strategic partnerships, mobilising resources and implementing innovative solutions with development partners, we can light up Africa and fuel progress,” Dr Nchemba said.

Dr Nchemba encouraged the development partners to step forward and announce new funding commitment and technical support initiatives that will drive the continent’s energy transformation and achieve the targets of Mission 300.