Mission 300 is a joint initiative led by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the African Development Bank Group, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Sustainable Energy for All and the Global Energy Alliance, to provide first time electricity access to 300 million people in Africa by 2030. The World Bank Group financing aims to connect 250 million people and the African Development Bank targets 50 million people.
Mission 300 is a one-of-a-kind platform that accelerates project delivery, coordinates donor assistance, crowds in private sector investment, and facilitates energy sector reforms through country-led National Energy Compacts. Mission 300 was launched in April 2024 at the World Bank Group – International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington DC and endorsed by African Heads of State in January 2025 as a continental initiative. It complements other African Union-led continental initiatives, including the Continental Power System Master Plan and the African Single Electricity Market.
As of 2024, 560 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still lived without access to electricity. Africa has the largest electricity access gap in the world. Energy poverty constrains socio-economic development, jobs, education, health care, agriculture and business growth.
Mission 300 aims to reduce Africa’s electricity access gap at a scale and pace that match the urgency of population growth and development needs. It links electricity access to economic transformation: light for households, electricity for agriculture, power for clinics and schools, longer operating hours for small businesses productive uses of energy, and stronger conditions for private investment.
National Energy Compacts are country commitments to undertake reforms, mobilize funding, and prioritize investments to realize their national energy ambitions. The first wave of compacts was launched at the Heads of State Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in January 2025. To date, 36 countries have launched National Energy Compacts.
No. Mission 300 is active across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa where the World Bank Group and African Development Bank have active energy access projects — whether or not a country has signed a compact. Compacts are a key delivery and reform tool, but results come from Mission 300-aligned projects across the continent. Conversely, compacts are country-owned policy documents that go beyond achieving results during Mission 300’s timeframe.
Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units (CDMUs) are teams of national experts that coordinate implementation of the National Energy Compacts. They help governments coordinate across ministries, utilities, partners, and investors, monitor reform progress, and address bottlenecks that slow connection delivery. As of July 2026, funding has been established for technical support to 16 CDMUs, with more to come.
The core Mission 300 metric is the number of people provided with access to electricity through new household connections from 1 July 2023 (the start of the World Bank Group 2024 Fiscal Year) to December 31, 2030 (the end-date of the initiative). These connections may be delivered through grid extension, renewable energy-powered mini-grids, or stand-alone off-grid solar systems. Lanterns and solar lamps are excluded from the methodology.
A physical electricity connection is provided at the household level. The number of people connected is estimated by multiplying verified household connections by the country’s official average household size. The headline metric for Mission 300 is people connected.
Mission 300 includes entry-level (Tier 1) household connections that provide at least 4 hours of electricity per day, all the way to full, reliable modern electricity access (Tier 5), while helping people move up the ladder of access and consumption by improving the availability and reliability of power.
Mission 300 does not count Tier 0 solutions, such as lanterns and solar lamps, nor does it include: temporary or informal connections; meter replacements or upgrades that don’t create a new household connection; indirect/Inferred access; and access enabled by technical assistance.
Investments in generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, as well as policy and regulatory reforms and institutional capacity strengthening, are not counted as direct household connections. While these activities are essential enablers of electricity access and the successful delivery of Mission 300, they are not counted in the core “people connected” indicator.
Mission 300 uses a common methodology developed by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), aligned with both the WBG Results Measurement System and the AfDB Ten-Year Strategy Results Management Framework (2024–2033). The number of people provided with access to electricity is estimated by multiplying the number of verified household connections by the national average household size, using official national statistics.
Reported results are verified by the World Bank Group and African Development Bank. In some cases, mostly in the context of Results Based Financing, an Independent Verification Agency (IVA) may confirm the status of connections, conduct phone and/or field verifications of active connections and conduct spot checks using a sampling approach.
Results are publicly trackable through the World Bank Group Mission 300 Progress Portal and the African Development Bank Mission 300 tracker.
No, Mission 300 does not count projects – it counts verified results delivered between 1 July 2023 and 31 December 2030, irrespective of when the underlying project was approved or will close. The methodology covers results from both active and completed projects as long as results fall within the Mission 300 reporting period. This approach is transparent, publicly disclosed, and reflects the reality that large-scale electrification projects often take years to deliver results. Accordingly, achieving the Mission 300 target depends not only on scaling up investments in brand-new electricity access projects but also on accelerating the implementation and delivery of new connections across the World Bank Group and African Development Bank portfolio.
Large energy infrastructure programs often take years to deliver access results. Mission 300 accelerates the delivery of results financed by active projects while also scaling up new investments, reforms, compacts, and implementation support. Connecting 300 million people by 2030 cannot be achieved only through projects approved after the initiative launched.
July 1, 2023 is the start of the 2024 Fiscal Year for the World Bank Group. Even though Mission 300 was launched in April 2024, the beginning of the 2024 Fiscal Year provides a clean accounting window for verified results delivered by World Bank Group-financed projects.
Data are reported by project implementation units, utilities, private sector borrowers and investees, regulators, distributed renewable energy providers, and government agencies, in line with each operation’s results framework and monitoring arrangements.
Mission 300 collaborates with countries to identify and implement the most reliable, least-cost solutions for expanding electricity access, tailoring strategies to local needs and national priorities. Because energy planning is highly context-specific, there is no projected or uniform energy mix. However, the cost of renewables is decreasing fast, making it ever more competitive to connect people through decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions. Approximately half of the people connected under Mission 300 are expected to be reached through DRE solutions, while the remainder will be connected by expanding and strengthening power grids.
Expanding electricity access to 300 million people does not necessarily require a proportional increase in grid capacity. Not all new connections require large amounts of electricity since Mission 300 mostly targets household connections, and around half of the people connected will be served through distributed renewable energy solutions which do not draw electricity from national grids. However, Mission 300 explicitly supports expanding power generation capacity, strengthening transmission infrastructure, and enabling regional power integration to meet growing and evolving demand.
Mission 300 includes entry-level (Tier 1) household connections that provide at least 4 hours of electricity per day, all the way to full, reliable modern electricity access (Tier 5), while helping people move up the ladder of access and consumption by improving the availability and reliability of power.
Yes. Reaching 300 million more people with electricity requires a comprehensive approach: expanding generation and transmission, strengthening regional trade, advancing sector reforms, and attracting private investment to deliver power that is reliable, affordable, and high quality. This broader approach ensures that Mission 300’s focus on household access also drives economic and infrastructural development, supporting livelihoods, businesses and services across the region. To ensure reliable, affordable power, this means investing in each country’s least-cost energy supply options including a practical mix of sources such as hydropower, geothermal, wind, solar, and natural gas that reflects each country’s natural resource base.Mission 300 does not count Tier 0 solutions, such as lanterns and solar lamps, nor does it include: temporary or informal connections; meter replacements or upgrades that don’t create a new household connection; indirect/Inferred access; and access enabled by technical assistance.
Investments in generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, as well as policy and regulatory reforms and institutional capacity strengthening, are not counted as direct household connections. While these activities are essential enablers of electricity access and the successful delivery of Mission 300, they are not counted in the core “people connected” indicator.
No. The core indicator counts people provided with access to electricity through new household connections, but the broader initiative goes further by strengthening infrastructure, institutions, utilities, power trade, investment conditions, productive uses of energy, and clean cooking. More reliable electricity benefits households and industrial consumers alike. The World Bank Group and African Development Bank also track power provided to businesses and public and social institutions.
Clean cooking is part of the Mission 300 reform agenda and National Energy Compact priorities, but the core electricity access metric counts people provided with first-time access to electricity through verified household connections.
Reported results are verified by the World Bank Group and African Development Bank. In some cases, mostly in the context of Results Based Financing, an Independent Verification Agency (IVA) may confirm the status of connections, conduct phone and/or field verifications of active connections and conduct spot checks using a sampling approach.
Both. Countries’ electricity access plans include grid extension, renewable mini grids, and standalone solar systems. Distributed renewable energy plays a major role, especially where grid extension is not the least cost or fastest pathway to connecting households to electricity.
Productive use refers to electricity that supports economic activity, businesses, livelihoods, public services, and social institutions, beyond household lighting.
Mission 300 is designed to leverage and drive private sector investment in the energy sector as public financing is not sufficient to achieve countries’ ambitious electrification targets. Private capital is central to achieving the scale and ambition of Mission 300. A preliminary assessment of the 36 National Energy Compacts indicates that approximately half of the financing required to achieve countries’ ambitions will need to come from the private sector. To unlock this investment, the initiative promotes energy sector reforms, simplified licensing, risk mitigation instruments, bankable contracts, catalytic capital, guarantees, and investment in distributed renewable energy. It also seeks to expand private sector participation across the entire power value chain, including generation, transmission, distribution, and off-grid energy solutions.
Partners are working to unlock more private capital in support of Mission 300. For example, Sustainable Energy for All, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Africa50 and the International Solar Alliance have developed the DRE Africa Platform to raise financing to offer tailored financial instruments and attract private sector capital while addressing critical challenges such as currency volatility, tariff structures, and the limited availability of local currency financing options.
Partners have also advanced innovative tools to reduce investment risk for the private sector. Zafiri, the initiative’s flagship investment vehicle, uses a $300 million anchor investment from the World Bank Group, African Development Bank Group and partners, to provide long-term equity to distributed renewable energy (DRE) companies. This helps to bring reliable, affordable power to communities beyond the reach of traditional grids. Additional investors include Trade and Development Bank, Nordic Development Fund, FirstRand Group, The Rockefeller Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation.
The Mission 300 Private Sector Council is a high-level advisory platform bringing together 14 global and African leaders from energy, finance, investment, industry and technology to align Mission 300 with market priorities. The group convenes quarterly to discuss key priorities and bottlenecks affecting private sector participation in Mission 300, and how to mitigate them.
On the contrary, by mobilizing private investment to complement limited concessional financing, countries can avoid unsustainable debt burdens. Reforms undertaken by governments as part of their National Energy Compacts also seek to reduce reliance on government subsidies by helping utilities improve their cost recovery and operational efficiency. Transparent oversight mechanisms and revenue-enhancing reforms further safeguard countries against unsustainable debt.
Not necessarily. Transparent and competitive tendering processes for independent power producer contracts help ensure that electricity costs remain affordable for end-users: when private generators must compete openly to win a contract, they are forced to reveal and lower their true costs, and that lower price flows through to the tariffs consumers ultimately pay. Many utilities also have subsidized tariffs for very poor consumers to ensure that poorer households can afford electricity services.
Turning the power on for millions of people and firms in Africa is one of the most exciting challenges of our times – laying the foundations for growth and job creation at scale. If Africa is to generate enough jobs for its growing population, it needs power – reliable, affordable power — for businesses to grow, for economies to compete, and for people to have higher levels of human capital and quality of life. While the headline goal is to connect 300 million people to electricity by 2030, enhancing the quality of the national electric grid and investing in mini-grids to improve livelihoods and create jobs is a core part of Mission 300. With electricity, people work longer, safer, and more productively. With access to more reliable and affordable electricity, businesses are also able to invest in modern equipment, expand their operations and create jobs.
Mission 300 links electricity access to job creation, business growth, productive uses of energy, and stronger public service delivery. Reliable, affordable, sustainable energy is foundational to economic transformation that creates jobs.
Local communities are involved in Mission 300 projects through consultations and surveys at the project design and implementation phases. Their feedback informs project design and environmental and social impact assessments, helping ensure projects reflect local needs and deliver meaningful change.
Electricity access supports women’s education, home-based income generation, jobs, entrepreneurship, and health benefits through clean cooking. WBG supported projects include gender assessment and action planning. Because women are typically the primary managers of household energy, they bear a disproportionate share of the health risks, time burdens, and lost economic opportunities of energy poverty, which Mission 300 is designed to reduce. Beyond household connections, the initiative works to close gender gaps on the supply side through programs that channel productive-use equipment to women-led enterprises and workforce measures that raise women’s participation in energy-sector
Clean cooking is part of the broader reform agenda because it delivers major health and time saving benefits, especially for women and girls who often bear the burden of collecting fuelwood and cooking with polluting fuels. It is also a major economic factor for urban households, where charcoal makes up a significant part of expenditures. The National Energy Compacts outline measures to close clean cooking access gaps.
Under Mission 300, World Bank Group and African Development Bank projects support electricity access for clinics, schools, and public institutions. Household access also strengthens health, education and safety for families.