By Faridat Salifu
The Federal Government has announced plans to raise $32.8 billion to execute the Mission 300 Compact, a continental initiative to provide electricity to 300 million unserved people across Africa.
Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu disclosed this at the Mission 300 Stakeholders Engagement held in Abuja recently.
He said the government expects $15.5 billion of the total financing to come from private sector investment.
According to the minister, Mission 300 aims to deliver scalable, reliable energy solutions that can help close the continent’s widening electricity access gap by 2030.
Adelabu emphasized that the stakeholders’ meeting served as a platform to align strategies and strengthen partnerships needed to transform Nigeria’s Energy Compact into measurable results.
He said the Federal Government is committed to achieving universal electricity access by 2030, in line with global and regional energy access targets.
The minister acknowledged ongoing challenges in the Nigerian power sector, including market liquidity issues, infrastructure gaps, and outstanding debts to generation companies.
He revealed that as of December 2024, the government owed approximately N4 trillion in unpaid subsidies to power generation companies.
To address these constraints, he noted that the government is investing in transmission expansion, grid stability, and distribution reforms through programs like the Presidential Metering Initiative and the World Bank-supported Distribution Sector Recovery Program (DISREP).
Adelabu also reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to the Dar es Salaam Energy Access Declaration, which was signed in January 2025 by President Bola Tinubu and 11 other African leaders.
The declaration sets a target of increasing electricity access across Africa by 4–9 percent annually and improving clean cooking access from 22 to 25 percent per year.
The World Bank Group has pledged support for the Mission 300 initiative as part of its broader efforts to halve Africa’s energy access gap.
At the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit held in Tanzania, World Bank President Ajay Banga announced the Bank’s commitment to help connect 300 million Africans to electricity.
Back in February 2025, Adedayo Olowoniyi, Chief Technical Adviser to the Minister of Power, said that over 150 million Nigerians now have electricity access, with work ongoing to connect the remaining 86 million people.
He said the first phase of the project includes the construction of five new substations across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones to improve power transmission and distribution.