Originally published in NextBillion, February 18, 2026.
Energy is essential to Africa’s development, but progress has stalled over a false choice: Should the continent prioritize the basic solar home systems that move households up the energy ladder — or should it invest in making electricity cheaper and more reliable for businesses to power job creation and economic growth?
As this debate has unfolded across the sector, African companies are struggling to compete because of inadequate power, and more than half a billion Africans still live without any electricity. How the region addresses this dual challenge will define its development trajectory for decades to come — while also determining whether initiatives like Mission 300, which aims to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, are able to deliver.
At the Energy for Growth Hub and CLASP, we believe that ending energy poverty can only be achieved by balancing these two priorities: ensuring that households have basic access that meets their circumstances, while also powering the businesses that create jobs and opportunity. That doesn’t mean funding everything equally or pursuing all investments at once. But it does mean resisting false trade-offs between ensuring initial residential access and powering business activities, while designing systems that advance both priorities.
Read the full piece here.