This activity (InfraCo Africa Development is a facility of the Private Infrastructure Development Group and has been designed to assume the risks and costs of early-stage project development in lower income countries in Africa) is a component of Second phase of DFID's Support to the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG). reported by FCDO, with a funding type of 'Multilateral organisation' and a budget of £43,780,000.

The Private Sector Development Programme has five components: the Business Enabling Environment Programme (BEEP), the Malawi Oilseeds Sector Transformation Programme (MOST), the Business Innovation Facility (BIF), and the Malawi Innovation Challenge Fund (MICF) and the Monitoring and Evaluation component. The first four programmes were hampered in some way by external factors during the year under review, including a near total rain failure during the 2015/2016 cultivation season, power shortages that resulted in daily blackouts lasting up to 16 hours.

The AfSEM aims at connecting the Continent’s energy strategies and action plans by harmonising regulatory frameworks and integrating generation, transmission, and distribution master plans. This will allow for the diversification of energy sources supporting energy transition, better trade and investments exchanges, and close the energy infrastructure gaps between regions and countries.

The goal is to build one of the largest electricity markets in the world, covering the African Union's 55 Member States, and a population of more than 1.3 billion.

The Africa-EU Strategic Partnership is the formal channel through which the European Union and the African continent work together. It is based on the Joint Africa-Europe Strategy that was adopted by Heads of State and Government at the second EU-Africa Summit in 2007.

GET.invest is a European programme which supports investments in decentralised renewable energy. The programme targets private sector business and project developers, financiers and regulators to build sustainable energy markets in developing countries. Services include market information, a funding database, matchmaking events and access-to-finance advisory. The programme is supported
by the European Union, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria, and works closely with initiatives and business associations in the energy sector. GET.invest runs on the multi-donor platform

The Digital Energy Facility is an EU-funded programme, implemented by the Agence Française de Développement (French Development Agency).

The energy sector faces a major transformation from a centralised system to a decentralised network, mono-directional to multi-directional, carbon-based to decarbonised, infrastructure centered to consumer-centric network.

Time is running out. At current emissions levels, the IPCC tells us that a safe 1.5°C “carbon budget” will be exhausted in 7 years. Africa is uniquely vulnerable to climate disruptions. For each additional degree of global temperature rise above the present level, one billion people will find themselves living in areas uninhabitable for humans, cattle and crops, as those areas will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert. Many of those places are located in Africa.

The CHOICES (Community and Household Options In Choosing Energy Services) project in South Africa's Eastern Cape sought to enable communities to make sustainable energy choices that reduced energy poverty and stimulated local development. The project focused on building local people's capacity to participate in identifying and exploring locally appropriate energy options with greater community benefits. 

The IEA has launched the four-year cross-agency Digital Demand-Driven Electricity Networks Initiative (3DEN), which is working to identify the policy, regulation, technology and investments needed to accelerate progress on power system modernisation and effective utilisation of distributed energy resources.

Universal energy access is one of the driving forces in alleviating poverty and ensuring sustainable and inclusive economic growth. The IEA World Energy Outlook, however, shows that close to 600 million people remain without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. This number rose in 2020 due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing progress observed in recent years. A delayed recovery would see the number of individuals without access to electricity increase from almost 600 to 630 million by 2030.