With nearly 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still living without access to electricity, Mission 300 stands out as a bold and transformative initiative. Led by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mission 300 is a continent-wide effort that brings together African governments, the private sector, and development partners to deliver affordable power, expand electricity access, boost utility efficiency, attract private investment, and enhance regional energy integration — all aimed at driving inclusive economic transformation.
To mobilize resources and align efforts toward powering Africa, these leading financial institutions are working alongside key partners such as The Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), and the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) trust fund.
Enas Abdella Abdulmalik serves as the country lead for Ethiopia at GEAPP. The Reporter’s Sisay Sahlu sat down with Enas to find out more about the massive undertaking that is Mission 300. With more than two decades of experience in strategy, finance, and sustainable development, Enas plays a pivotal role in advancing GEAPP’s mission to tackle energy poverty and climate change through innovative clean energy solutions tailored to local needs. Read more about what she had to say.
The Reporter: Could you briefly introduce yourself and Mission 300?
I am the country lead for the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, which is a philanthropic organization that was started a few years back by the Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund. It has three pillars: energy access or transition, job creation and enabling livelihoods, and carbon removal. So they got together and formed this new entity called GEAPP for short, the Global Energy Alliance, to further this mission.
Mission 300 is an initiative that brings together two large multilateral development banks, the African Development Bank and the World Bank, to accelerate and provide energy access for 300 million Africans by 2030. This is an initiative that started last year.
How do you plan to implement this initiative? Do you believe the target of reaching 300 million people by 2030 is truly feasible?
That’s a very good question. Some of the access numbers are going to come from existing programs that the World Bank and African Development Bank are actually already doing, but some are going to be new.
Is it feasible? We’re going to try. The good thing about this sort of initiative is that the two banks came together and agreed on a path forward to actually accelerate this sort of initiative. So is it feasible? I mean, unless you try, you won’t know, right? But really, our strategy is designed to empower nations.
We have the political leadership from the top down to actually implement this. In January 2025, there was something called the Tanzanian meeting on energy access where over nearly 30 heads of state came together and agreed to the Mission 300 initiative and to drive it from the top down.
So at least we have the buy-in from the top-down and then we can actually push it through as well.
What mechanisms are you using to achieve this goal? Are you directly engaging in implementation, or are you primarily supporting governments in building the systems themselves?
We support governments. We support the integration of essentially locally led approaches into the broader climate finance agenda. There are currently 27 national energy compacts in progress. Twelve have been signed and 15 are underway, which structure and promote country-specific energy efforts. For example, in Ethiopia, which is where I work as well, the compacts, which is the document that actually says that we’re going to try to do X and Y, is in the process of drafting and ready to be signed hopefully in the next month or so. Once these compacts are signed, we, as GEAPP, are creating what we call CDMUs, or Compact Delivery Monitoring Units.
This will look different in every country where we can actually deliver and monitor, essentially like a delivery unit of these compacts across the board. It essentially aims to strengthen delivery capacity, improve stakeholder coordination, and integrate development goals such as job creation into the energy projects. GEAPP also is working on an initiative called Productive Africa, which looks at the development side of the access story.
For example, if you avail energy access to a community that has never had power, they will use it to charge their mobile phones or one lamp. But what we’re hoping to do is actually accelerate additional uses or the productive use of energy, which also has really large broader economic development for our communities.
One issue often raised in Sub-Saharan African nations, including Ethiopia, is the level of political commitment to climate action. How are you addressing this challenge?
That’s a great question. And that’s why I mentioned what took place earlier this year in Tanzania. It’s called the Dar es Salaam Energy Declaration. It happened just this January where 30 heads of state all signed on to the Mission 300 initiative.
So there is political commitment. There is willingness. Now we just have to push it through.
This year marks COP30. Over the past three decades, we’ve seen agreement after agreement and initiative after initiative on climate action. What gives you confidence that this particular initiative will be fulfilled?
Well, this is African. COP constitutes the broader goals; Mission 300 is purely African. The initiative aims to electrify 300 million Africans. That’s half the number of people that don’t have power today. Six hundred million Africans don’t have power today.
This is a very audacious goal to reach by 2030. But there is political commitment. The aim is to actually accelerate the implementation and mobilize money, not only from DFIs and multilateral banks, but also bring together private sectors. There are agreements with the Trade and Development Bank (TDB) to mobilize and funnel through the private sector into energy generation. And that’s why it’s different. Never in history, at least on African soil, have the World Bank and African Development Bank worked together with this joint mission from their heads to actually push this agenda through.
Why are the IKEA Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund and Rockefeller Foundation involved if the initiative is purely African?
I do not represent Rockefeller, IKEA Foundation, or Bezos Earth Fund. I’m from GEAPP, the Global Energy Alliance. So that’s a different entity.
But, for example, Rockefeller has been supporting energy access and transition programs across the world for many, many years. They’re providing technical assistance money to support the CDMUs across African countries where they could actually embed this. For example, in Malawi, it might be embedded within the presidential office. The unit will be embedded there to actually work with all the line ministries because energy, as you know, is just not energy usage. It touches agriculture. It touches irrigation. It touches many industries.
Whose initiative is this?
It’s an initiative by AfDB and the World Bank.
Is it not possible to work with an African philanthropic organization instead of going outside the continent?
You tell me, is there an African philanthropic organization?
If there is a strong determination to establish an Africa-led initiative, why not take the lead and act on it directly, rather than waiting for another round of philanthropy from the west or North America?
Mission 300 is driven by the World Bank and AfDB. AfDB is an African entity. Their partners are also African. For example, TDB is an African entity working in southern and eastern Africa. But there’s lots of African entities actually involved in this.
You can’t push the compacts across different countries without working with African entities. The technical support and assistance; some of them are actually coming from Rockefeller, Solar Cookers for All (Sc4all), and some support from others like JAP Africa as well. But I think different folks are actually keen to push it through. For example, we had a meeting earlier today around clean cooking. JAP Africa does not do clean cooking, but there’s a clean cooking alliance, which is Africa-based. That’s also part of Mission 300.
In international gatherings and summits, there is often concern about the persistent funding gap — a concern that has only grown since the United States withdrew from some international organizations. How will this affect institutions such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank? Do you believe they will still receive some level of funding from the US, one way or another?
I think that’s a question for the World Bank and African Development Bank.
Given that you are implementing something here, would it be unreasonable to assume that you have some idea?
So far, we do not.
Have you encountered any funding issues?
Not under Mission 300, no. I mean, part of Mission 300 is actually to mobilize money and catalyze money across the board from many different entities. If the Americans drop out, the Americans drop out.
There’s still a need for electrifying 300 million Africans in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What are the main challenges in achieving clean energy access across the African continent? Which key factors are holding back progress, and what specific issues does this initiative aim to address?
That’s very complicated. Africa is not one country. For example, in South Africa, access is not really an issue; its transition. They have non-renewable sources of energy and they have to transition over to renewables because of the climate change issue. In DRC and Nigeria, it’s a mix of both. They have people that don’t have access and people that do but are using diesel generators.
So it’s a mix. I don’t think you can paint the solution and the problem with just one liner. I can talk about Ethiopia, which is not the same as any other country. In Kenya, access is not an issue as well. There’s maybe optimal access. Do they have blackouts? Is it cheap? Is it affordable? All these other questions are there. And are they actually using appliances optimally? In Ethiopia, we have 50 to 60 million people without power.
Most of these people are smaller farmers in rural areas where the transmission line might go over their village but doesn’t come down to their houses. There are fundamental issues as to why this is. For example, the tariff rate is highly subsidized.
So both EEP [Ethiopian Electric Power] and EEU [Ethiopian Electric Utility] are operating at a loss. But farmers can’t afford to pay cost-effective tariffs. We in the city can’t afford to pay cost-effective tariffs.
There’s a mismatch there. They can’t pull down the lines because it’s very expensive to do so. So then they have to find sources of financing. And it takes a long time. What Ethiopia has done in the last five years is actually allowing private sector developers in off-grid areas to actually generate and sell energy—DRE or distributed renewable energy. Mini-grids are now a thing. And under EEU, they’re building 20 to 30 mini-grids under the World Bank program. We also have a program called DREAM that’s actually looking at doing that around Arba Minch, outside Hawassa, and in other southern cities.
But these are all mini grids, off grid. We’re hopeful that we can power centralized irrigation schemes for farmers that are actually in clusters, who then actually cost-subsidize their own homes and have very, very low subsidized rates for their homes. But for the actual productive use of energy, it’s actually a much higher rate.
Our directive allows that. It’s been five years, but no company has actually even fully tested it or been fully licensed. We’re hoping that our program might be the first one. We have developers coming into Ethiopia and actually investing as FDI into the space. Things are changing.
It’s highly complex. But fundamentally, the more energy you use, the more you earn money in terms of empowerment and broader economic development. It goes hand in hand. Really, energy is an enabler of the reduction of poverty. It’s a big factor and a big focus why our program, under Productive Africa, actually supports sort of the additional usage of energy and not just access.
As governments are often the largest investors in the sector, is there an enabling legal framework and enabling environment for private investment to engage in the energy sector?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can speak about Ethiopia again. Our Ministry of Finance is trying to do large-scale, utility-scale PPPs or IPPs with private investors in geothermal and solar plants and wind. There are always MOUs signed with very large firms. But the feed-in tariff rate is always a big issue. For example, on the off-grid site we operate, we have an international mini-grid developer that’s keen to invest in the next month. The developer is in the process of registering or being licensed. It’s changing slowly but the regulation is there and it allows private sector investment. But it’s also difficult. There’s a lot of processes. It’s new to the country. It’s new to the investors. So we have to walk that path before we actually provide feedback to improve it.
Is it open to all investors?
In off-grid, it is. The law allows for off-grid developers. There’s a directive that permits the generation and selling of energy to off-grid customers. But nobody has fully tested it out. So we’re testing it out. For utility, large-scale, you can sign PPPs like the Ministry of Finance. But if it’s small-scale and off-grid, it’s possible.
There is a significant data challenge here in Ethiopia, where many have to rely on international institutions like the UN for up-to-date information. Does this pose a challenge to you? In reality, how many people actually have access to electricity?
For example, the Ministry of Water and Energy has a lot of data but it’s a tricky question. I think the answer is that it depends. When was the last time a census was conducted in Ethiopia? Like 15, 18 years ago. So yes, data accuracy is a big question. You’re right.
Has this been a problem for you?
Once you make your presumptions, then you have to go to the sites and actually do actual physical ground-truthing. For example, if you presume that this area doesn’t have power because the median voltage line is here, but nobody’s giving you information, you have to pay money and go fly there or drive there to actually confirm that what you think on paper is true is actually true. Ground-truthing is a big part of the work that developers do on the ground.
Climate change is a major issue today, especially among millennials and Gen Z. We see protests in the west and even across Africa, as young people demand action. Yet some leaders, such as President Trump, appear indifferent to the issue. Climate change has become a global agenda item. How do you see the relationship between climate change and renewable energy?
Well, the good thing is that we’re on a different continent. We’re in Africa, so we’re not in America. But, you know, it’s funny, I had a meeting earlier today with members of parliament that are part of the climate parliamentary working group in their own countries—Uganda, Botswana, and several others—and climate is a big part of the conversation. In Uganda, you cannot start new work before receiving a certificate of climate compliance. Climate agendas are embedded into parliaments and members of parliament today.
Can we say there is an equal understanding of climate issues and their impact?
I don’t think anybody can say that, because my understanding is probably even very different from yours.
How do you see climate injustice as an African?
It’s an injustice. Like you said, it’s an injustice.
How do we correct this injustice?
Our Prime Minister said it during the opening session. He said that we have had the least impact, well, if you remove South Africa, and we’re the most impacted. Even during my earlier meeting with members of parliament from Botswana, they said that villages are aware that if they don’t make this an agenda, they’re going to be impacted. There are floods. There are droughts where historically it was not part of their life. But now it is. I think a sort of grassroots movement is also happening within the African continent.
Whenever there are climate-related meetings, the central issue is often financing. Developed countries usually promise and pledge billions of dollars, but in practice, the funds are not delivered. How can developing nations address this challenge?
That’s why programs like Mission 300 are critical because it coalesces everybody and actually drives an agenda forward to ensure that people are moving forward from the high levels, say in D.C., heads of state and all the way down. That’s why it’s really, really important that we all support initiatives like this.
What about financing from domestic entities and investors?
A big part of Mission 300 is engaging the private sector. Private sector developers, implementers, financiers, all of that is part and parcel. Even a small country like Malawi requires billions of dollars.
How’s it going to happen? You have to get everybody involved. A bigger country like Ethiopia needs tens of billions of dollars. So, you have to get everybody involved. It’s not a grant thing. It’s not just money being given away. It’s mobilizing everyone toward the same goal and moving it forward and with the highest levels of commitment.
