A coalition of 27 leading minigrid developers has warned that Africa will require between $28 billion and $46 billion in fresh capital over the next five years to scale decentralised electricity systems and help to power hundreds of millions of people still living without reliable energy.

In a detailed Action Plan aligned with the World Bank–African Development Bank (AfDB)-backed Mission 300 (M300) initiative, the firms argued that minigrids would be indispensable in achieving universal access, particularly in rural, peri-urban and underserved communities where grid extension remains slow or uneconomical.

According to the developers, 29 African governments have already signed M300 Energy Compacts, committing to expanding electricity access. Of these, 20 countries provided details on how new connections would be delivered.

Seventeen per cent of the planned connections are expected to come from minigrids to serve 81 million people. Another eight countries indicated that more than 70 million people would be connected through off-grid solutions, though without specifying whether this would be done via minigrids or standalone solar.

A lead author, William Brent, said assuming half of those off-grid connections are eventually delivered by minigrids, the industry estimates that 116 million people or about 23 million connections, could be served by minigrid systems under Mission 300.

Delivering at such a scale, however, represents an unprecedented challenge. At an assumed average of 500 connections per minigrid, Africa would need to deploy around 46,000 new minigrids between 2026 and 2030, roughly 9,200 per year or more than 760 per month. Current deployment rates fall dramatically short of this target.

Industry data show that between 2022 and 2024, 27 major companies delivered just 116 minigrids in total, equivalent to 39 per year. Brent said: “This is several orders of magnitude higher than anything the sector has achieved so far,” calling for a fundamental shift in financing, regulation and delivery models.

The firms behind the plan collectively operate 392 minigrids, with $310 million already invested, serving 172,000 connections and a development pipeline exceeding 1GW of capacity.

The pipeline alone represents up to $8.2 billion in capital needs. The companies said they were ready to scale rapidly, but only if systemic barriers were removed.

The firms are seeking regulatory certainty that would see all governments finalise mini-grid frameworks by the end of the year. They are also urging for commercial viability that would enable cost-reflective tariffs as well as economic impact, as they stressed on industry readiness.

Their 17 proposals, grouped around capital mobilisation, industry capacity and government support, seek access to corporate equity and local-currency debt, rather than relying almost exclusively on project-level financing.

Developers have argued that current funding models slow growth, increase transaction costs and expose projects to foreign exchange risk. They are calling on development finance institutions (DFIs), multilateral development banks (MDBs), sovereign wealth funds and pension funds to establish large-scale equity vehicles that focus on company-level growth, alongside expanded use of concessional capital, guarantees and political risk insurance.

Another central demand is regulatory certainty. The developers said they would not enter or scale into new markets until minigrid regulations are finalised.

The Action Plan further calls for Mission 300 to broaden how success is measured. Currently, the programme focuses largely on household connections. The developers want small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and social institutions such as schools and clinics to be fully counted, arguing that productive use of energy is vital for economic growth, higher electricity consumption and the long-term sustainability of minigrids.

Other recommendations include scaling results-based financing programmes, supporting companies entering new national markets, standardising technical and performance benchmarks, adopting modular system designs, investing in workforce development and leveraging digital tools and artificial intelligence to improve planning and operations.

Industry leaders urged stronger coordination between governments, donors and the private sector, with real-time tracking of capital mobilisation, deployment speed and development impact.

“Only by deploying these 17 action steps will we be able to deliver electricity access at the scale required,” the developers said, warning that without rapid action, Mission 300 risks falling far short of its ambition to transform lives, create jobs and reduce Africa’s vulnerability to climate change.