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With over 600 million people lacking reliable energy across the continent, Africa faces challenges that threaten health, livelihoods and environmental sustainability. A presentation at this year’s African Energy Week: Invest in African Energies 2024 conference focused on Empowering Africa: Diversifying Energy for Growth, which explored the need to increase power supply and diversify the continent’s energy mix.

“Renewables and batteries will account for 90% of new power capacity globally, on a net basis, becoming the dominant sources of power supply,” stated Silvia Macri, Associate Director responsible for renewable and power market analysis in Africa and the Middle East at market analysis group S&P Global Commodity Insights.

During the presentation, Macri expressed the need to drive renewable energy solutions across the continent, while promoting regional cooperation and infrastructure investment. It was noted that up to $277 billion will be required annually to implement the continent’s sustainable development goals.

“Clean energy projects dominate the pipeline, but extraction is generally slow owing to challenging access to finance and regulatory uncertainty. Power demand in Africa is projected to grow at a sustained rate in the next decade led by economic and population growth and increasing access to electricity,” Macri stated.

Meanwhile, Macri also highlighted the risks associated with embarking too heavily on the energy transition. She noted that relying on one source of energy – particularly sources with such high degrees of intermittency – could pose risks and challenges to energy security.