ENGIE Energy Access Calls for Overhaul of Grant Funding to Bridge $12 Billion Energy Access Gap in Africa

ENGIE Energy Access (EEA) has released a landmark white paper urging donors, governments, and development partners to fundamentally rethink how grant funding is structured, allocated, and managed in order to close Africa’s widening electricity gap. The paper, Maximising Impact: Transforming Grant Funding for Energy Access, warns that without bold reforms, Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) — universal access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy by 2030 — will remain out of reach.

A Critical Moment for Energy Access

The report highlights that more than 685 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still live without electricity, with the funding shortfall for standalone systems projected at $12 billion. Despite ambitious initiatives like Mission 300, current funding trajectories fall far short of what is required. “Grant funding must remain anchored in its original mission: delivering electricity to those still living in darkness,” the paper states.

Key Observations from the Field

Drawing on EEA’s 17 years of experience across nine African countries, the white paper identifies four urgent challenges:

1. Dilution of Focus – Core electrification efforts risk being sidelined by competing development priorities, such as advanced systems and broader social infrastructure, even though Tier 1–2 household solar solutions still deliver the greatest immediate impact.
2. Misaligned Instruments – While innovations like Results-Based Financing (RBF) are promising, they are often applied indiscriminately, failing to account for local realities.
3. Insufficient Capital Mix – Commercial investment alone cannot deliver universal access. In markets like Mozambique, a rise in grant share from 14% to 50% enabled household connections to expand more than twentyfold.
4. Fragmented Management – Disconnected, bureaucratic programs continue to slow implementation, with disbursement delays and high compliance costs reducing impact.

A Strategic Roadmap

To counter these challenges, EEA proposes four reforms:

• Refocusing Grants on Core Household Electrification while sequencing support to hardest-to-reach populations.
• Optimising Instruments by matching tools like subsidies, guarantees, and technical assistance with the right market segments.
• Boosting and Structuring Capital so that grants represent at least 50% of funding in frontier and emerging markets.
• Consolidating Programs into coordinated platforms with stronger governance, digitised monitoring, and enforceable disbursement standards.

A Call to Action

The report closes with a clear appeal: “This is the moment to simplify, scale, and deliver. We cannot close the access gap through incrementalism or isolated projects”. ENGIE Energy Access calls on donors and policymakers to move beyond rhetoric, channel capital into integrated platforms, and recommit to the unfinished job of bringing electricity to every African household.

If implemented, the recommendations could help transform grants from fragmented subsidies into catalytic investments capable of unlocking sustainable and inclusive energy systems across Sub-Saharan Africa.