Prospects for the African Power Sector

The main goal of the working paper is to provide insights into the opportunities and costs of renewable energy development pathways. The scenarios are not intended to be forecasts of what will happen but rather to allow the complex interaction of markets, costs and other core drivers to be analysed in order to identify key trends, development opportunities and critical technologies or assumptions. The paper provides early insights for the power sector in Africa. This analysis for Africa’s power sector focuses on the period to 2030, with an outlook to 2050 to examine long-term issues that have an impact on investment decisions in the near future. Two scenarios are analyzed: a reference scenario exploring a continuation of ongoing energy sector trends and a renewable scenario examining the impact of policies in Africa to actively promote the transition to a renewable-based electricity system.