African Energy Infrastructure Moves – Big and Small – Q3 + September 2025
This is part two of Substack’s quarterly infrastructure update. Part two is exclusively focused on ENERGY. While roads, ports, and digital systems (the subjects of part one) matter, energy is the base layer—the driver of productivity, the enabler of industry, and the source of expanded economic opportunity. Without steady and affordable power, factories remain idle, hospitals rely on generators, and students work in the dark. Energy access is more than a policy objective; it is the condition required for Africa’s structural transformation.
Progress is rarely linear. The Great Wall of China rose brick by brick—each step incremental, often imperceptible. Critiquing African leaders for slow progress is one of our favorite, and at times valid, parlor games. But these infrastructure updates are dispatches from the field of a “brick by brick” progress to build the infrastructure spine on which African economies will thrive.
1. Projects advancing regional integration are weighted higher in the priority order for these updates, so we start here - The EU Commits €359.4 Million to Cote d’Ivoire Transmission Project: “Once operational, the project is expected to increase Côte d’Ivoire’s high-voltage transmission capacity by nearly 38 percent, from 2.5 GW to 3.5 GW, while reducing transmission losses in the West African Power Pool (WAPP) by 1.4 percent. It is also expected to secure export capacity of up to 0.9 TWh per year to Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali, reinforcing the country’s ambition to become a regional hub for electricity trade.”
2. Uganda, the country will borrow to fund a power line to South Sudan: “Uganda plans to borrow $358 million from regional and private lenders to finance various projects, including a power grid interconnection with neighbouring South Sudan…” After commissioning a $1.7 billion Chinese-funded hydropower dam last year, Uganda now produces excess power and plans to export some of that “excess electricity to energy-starved South Sudan.”
3. But the biggest energy story on the continent this year than the completion of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. First imagined by colonial powers in the early 1900s and then abandoned, the dream of placing a dam on the Blue Nile has been one nurtured by successive Ethiopian governments from Haile Selassie to Meles Zenawi, who laid the first stone in 2011. “The dam’s output has gradually increased since the first turbine was turned on in 2022, and it reached its maximum 5,150 MW of power on Tuesday. That puts it among the 20 biggest hydroelectric dams in the world, at about one-quarter of the capacity of China’s Three Gorges Dam.”
4. Mozambique to Restart is $20 billion LNG Project: “Covered by force majeure since 2021, following insurgent attacks, the project includes development of the Golfinho and Atum natural gas fields in the Offshore Area 1 concession and the building of a two-train liquefaction plant.”
5. Possible 140-megawatt gas-to power plant along the Congo-Rwanda Border:
US firm, Symbion Power LLC, which is already planning a $1.5 billion Angola to Congo power line will build a 140MW power plant on the DRC-Rwanda border if the fragile peace holds. “The $700 million investment aims to convert methane from Lake Kivu into electricity on the Congolese side.”
6. IAEA to support Africa’s transition to Nuclear Energy: The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to supporting African countries in developing peaceful nuclear energy programmes, stressing that the continent must be fully integrated into the global shift toward low-emission energy sources.
7. Senegal Adds Battery Storage to Curb Blackouts: Senegalese state utility Senelec SA, will partner with Africa REN, to 10 megawatts of battery storage that’s capable of holding up to 20 megawatt-hours of electricity to an existing 16-megawatt solar plant as the country seeks to increase the share of renewable energy in its energy mix. The facility (€40 million) received debt financing from “the Dutch development bank and the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund.”
8. Uganda approves 100 MW Solar farm with 250 MWh Battery Energy Storage: In a substack post, last week, Todd Moss argued that Africa needs more big solar farms, not isolated “little solar islands”. This is one such project. “Energy America’s Nairobi, Kenya-based regional subsidiary, EA Astrovolt, will act as lead project developer and execution partner. A power purchase agreement (PPA) will be negotiated with the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL).”
9. South Africa to Forge Ahead with New Nuclear Power Plant: The South African government has upheld the decision to grant environmental approval for Eskom to build and operate a new 4000-megawatt power station, “close to the Koeberg plant near Cape Town that is currently the only existing commercial nuclear power in Africa.”
10. Zimbabwe will refurbish its 920-megawatt coal-fired power plant: The Zimbabwean government has completed a “$455 million, 15-year concession deal with the Africa-focused unit of India’s Jindal Steel refurbishment of a 920 megawatt coal-fired power plant…The work on six ageing units at the Hwange thermal power station is expected to take four years…Jindal Africa will recover its investment from revenue generated by electricity sales from the plant.”
11. Burundi commissions Phase I of $320 million hydropower project: With only 6% of its population having access to power, Burundi took a step in this quarter to reduce that gap. Per the AfDB, current generation capacity is about 40 megawatts. “The new project, with a combined generation capacity of 49.5 megawatts, involves two plants - Jiji and Mulembwe - developed on two small rivers in southern Burundi.” This quote is worth presenting in its totality “This new capacity will not only improve access to electricity for thousands of people, but will also boost productivity in key sectors such as health, education, agribusiness and ICT.”
Brick by brick.