Mwanga CMP Platform

The African Continental Master Plan: A continental approach to Africa's energy future

Demand for electricity in Africa is expected to more than triple by 2040 due to rapid industrialisation, urbanisation, rising household incomes and the effects of climate change. This will require a coordinated effort to plan power generation and transmission infrastructure at continental scale. In addition, the creation of the African Single Electricity Market (AfSEM) - one of the largest electricity markets in the world, serving more than 1.3 billion people - requires the physical interconnection of Africa's energy infrastructure.

In 2019, African energy ministers tasked the African Union Development Agency with leading the development of this interconnection through a Continental Master Plan (CMP) for electricity generation and transmission. The CMP aims to reduce the electricity deficit and enable balanced access to affordable, reliable and clean energy resources. It brings together more than 100 African stakeholders to rethink energy planning and co-create solutions to energy poverty.

The CMP is the masterplan for Africa's Green Vision, creating one grid for one continent. It is implemented by AUDA-NEPAD, supported by the European Union through the Continental Energy Programme in Africa (CEPA) , the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Master planning Africa's Single Electricity Market

Creating a long-term, continent-wide interconnection of Africa's energy infrastructure requires a coordinated planning process that increases regional electricity interconnections. The CMP provides a strategic roadmap for connecting Africa's five power pools: CAPP, COMELEC, EAPP, SAPP and WAPP. It is, in effect, a blueprint for AfSEM.

CEPA Achievements so far:

Building on this planning foundation, the CMP is now moving from strategy into implementation, with a focus on turning priority infrastructure into bankable, investment-ready projects:

• Prioritising, together with the African Power Pools, a first portfolio of cross-border interconnection projects and preparing agreed concept notes for each - applying a portfolio approach that accelerates preparation by advancing groups of projects together rather than one by one.
• Launching pre-feasibility studies for priority interconnectors, with the first studies completed for the Burundi-Tanzania (Jiji-Mulembwe-Kigoma) and Angola-DRC (Soyo-Inga) corridors - the start of a pipeline of up to 20 such studies designed to ready projects for investment.

This work is taken forward in close partnership with ENGAGE (Accelerating the Energy Transition in Africa), a German-funded initiative under Team Europe, into which the completed pre-feasibility studies feed so that priority projects can be packaged into bankable opportunities for implementation. Both CEPA and ENGAGE form part of the Africa-EU Green Energy Initiative (AEGEI) under the EU's Global Gateway.

CMP Phase II Achievements:

Africa's potential to become a leader in green energy

Expanding green energy in Africa is a global development priority. The scale of investment in Africa's green energy sector will influence not only the continent's socioeconomic development, but also the wider global economy.

The CMP has already created significant value in several areas, including:

• Bringing together a core team of African energy modellers from institutions such as AUDA-NEPAD, the African power pools and the African Development Bank.
• Building strategic partnerships for technical training with IRENA and the IAEA.
• Developing a common Continental Energy Information System.

Linking Africa's electricity infrastructure: achievements to date

At the core of the CMP is a collaborative effort among the five African regional power pools: the Central African Power Pool (CAPP), East African Power Pool (EAPP), Northern African Power Pool (COMELEC), Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) and West African Power Pool (WAPP). Through this participatory approach, the CMP has reached several major milestones towards creating a single electricity grid for Africa:

• Assessing the reference-case continental demand forecast to 2040: Deliverable 2, Part 1 factsheet and Deliverable 2, Part 2 factsheet .
• Assessing available resources and cost projections for energy technologies: Deliverable 3 factsheet .
• Identifying planning scenarios that respond to the challenges of Africa's five regions and support the aspirations of Agenda 2063: Deliverable 4 factsheet .
• Demonstrating how information technologies can support the storage and maintenance of key energy data: Deliverable 5 factsheet .

The figure below shows the timeline for the development of the CMP.

A major component of EU-Africa cooperation on energy

Building regional electricity interconnections and improving market integration are key pillars of the Africa-EU Green Energy Initiative . The shared ambition is to expand access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all Africans while contributing to Africa's socioeconomic development.