Key findings – Africa Energy Outlook 2022

Today’s global energy crisis has underscored the urgency, as well as the benefits, of an accelerated scale-up of cheaper and cleaner sources of energy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent food, energy and other commodity prices soaring, increasing the strains on African economies already hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The overlapping crises are affecting many parts of Africa’s energy systems, including reversing positive trends in improving access to modern energy, with 4% more people living without electricity in 2021 than in 2019. They are also deepening financial difficulties of utilities, increasing risks of blackouts and rationing. These problems are contributing to a sharp increase in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, with the number of people affected by food crises quadrupling in some areas.