NAIROBI, Kenya — Africa’s biggest clean energy challenge is shifting from building projects to building the institutions, markets and regulatory systems needed to deliver them at scale, experts say. That means the choke point isn’t the sun, the wind or the technology. It’s the machinery of control around them, and 600 million people in Africa are still not connected to power.
Who Gets Left in the Dark
Overcoming those obstacles is vital for securing access to electricity for the 600 million people in Africa who are yet to be connected. That number sits at the center of the story, even as the people making the decisions talk about markets, regulation and investment appetite. The hierarchy is plain enough. Those without power, literally, wait while institutions sort out the terms.
Renewables generated 34% of the world’s electricity in 2025, overtaking coal’s 33% share. Together with nuclear power, renewables are expected to provide half of global electricity by 2030. The numbers sound like progress, and they are, but the article makes clear that the bottleneck has moved from technology to the systems supporting it, including funding. Industrialization, artificial intelligence and electrification are pushing demand higher, and the people at the bottom are told to wait for the right regulatory climate.
What the Money Wants
Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, said in late June while announcing a new $285 million Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative to strengthen clean energy industries in emerging and developing economies: “Clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in virtually every part of the world.” He added, “But fixable obstacles are still slowing down deployment, and with energy demand rising at an unprecedented speed, we can’t allow those obstacles to continue standing in the way.”
The initiative will not finance solar farms or wind projects directly. Instead, it will invest in strengthening market design, regulatory capacity, technical expertise and industry institutions, areas increasingly viewed as essential for attracting private investment and accelerating use of renewable energy. That’s the real architecture here: not public control, not community ownership, but the careful grooming of systems that make projects attractive to capital.
The article says this reflects a growing consensus that Africa’s energy transition is constrained less by a lack of renewable resources or viable technologies than by the institutional capacity needed to turn those advantages into financially viable projects and electricity on the grid. Many projects remain delayed by weak market design, limited grid planning, slow permitting processes and fragmented regulatory systems. Bureaucracy doesn’t just slow things down. It decides who gets served first.
The Institutions Say They’re the Answer
Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, said, “What has been missing is not the potential, but the institutional infrastructure and capabilities to unlock it.” He added, “Philanthropy that targets those gaps directly is the kind of intervention that can shift the trajectory of a continent’s energy system.”
That’s the language of managed change. The article notes that across Africa, renewable energy costs have fallen sharply while investment appetite continues to grow. But investors say policy uncertainty, slow permitting processes and limited regulatory capacity are hindering projects. So the answer offered from above is more institutional strengthening, more market design, more capacity-building. The people who need electricity don’t get to design the system. They’re expected to live inside it.
Wangari Muchiri, founder and chief executive of RE.Think Energy, said the commitment signals that “the next phase of the energy transition is not about proving clean energy works, it’s about removing the barriers preventing it from scaling fast enough.” She added that “the next chapter of Africa’s renewable energy story will not be only by the projects it builds, but the institutions that make these projects possible.”
That’s where the article lands: not on direct public provision, not on grassroots control, but on institutions as gatekeepers. The clean energy shift is real. So is the fact that the people with the money, the titles and the regulatory levers still decide how fast it moves, where it goes and who waits.
The world’s electricity mix is changing. The power structure around it isn’t.