Mission 300 brings Africa electricity access to over 50 million people, but part of the count predates the program

Africa electricity access reaches 50 million people under Mission 300

Mission 300, a joint program of the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank Group, says it has brought Africa electricity access to more than 50 million people across 40 countries, as of 16 June 2026. The program funds work across the whole power system, generation, the plants that make electricity, transmission, the lines that carry it long distances, and last mile distribution, the final connection into a home or business, covering both grid connections and off grid systems that make their own power without joining any shared network. Mission 300 launched in April 2024 at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington DC, and it now says it is connecting people at nearly double the pace it managed at launch, working toward a goal of 300 million people connected across Africa by 2030.

Fifty million people connected is a milestone, but the bigger story is the pace and the partnership behind it.

Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group. Source 1.

Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia lead the reported country totals

Mission 300 credits Tanzania with 7.5 million newly connected people, a five fold jump on its average yearly electrification pace before the program began, and Nigeria with more than 4.5 million, delivered through private sector led projects. For Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Statistics Service has verified 3.5 million connections under the same program, a lower count than the 4.6 million Mission 300 states in its own press release and the 8 million a Mission 300 marketing page states for the identical effort.

Those 50 million are people who have flipped the switch.

Andrew Herscowitz, chief executive of the Mission 300 Accelerator. Source 3.

An independent check finds old projects counted as new

The policy research organization ODI, reading Mission 300 own reporting directly rather than summarizing its press releases, does not dispute the 50 million total, but finds the program counts results, in the World Bank own words as ODI quotes them, "irrespective of when the underlying operations were approved." That rule lets projects that predate Mission 300 count toward its total. ODI reports Tanzania 7.5 million figure is largely the relabeled result of the Tanzania Rural Electrification Expansion Program, a project approved in 2016 that had already reached 12,301 of 12,318 villages, 99.9% complete, by the end of 2024, before Mission 300 first full year had ended. It also reports that 619,000 of Nigeria total carries over from an older, predecessor project, and that Nigeria newer program signed its first developer contracts only 3 weeks before the 16 June 2026 announcement.

Financing behind the push

The 2 lead banks have committed nearly 15 billion dollars jointly to Mission 300 projects, drawing in about 4.5 billion dollars more in co financing and more than 7 billion dollars pledged by other development partners. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet have together committed more than 100 million dollars to the initiative.

Even with all that money and all those new connections, nearly 600 million people across Africa, about half the continent population, still have no electricity access at all, according to Daily Maverick and Sustainable Energy for All.