The call, up front. 666 million people still have no electricity, 85% of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Four decades of grid extension haven’t closed the gap, because central-grid economics break at the last mile (the final, hardest households to reach). Decentralized delivery, mini-grids (small local power networks) and solar home systems (per-home panel-and-battery kits), can physically reach every one of them, and largely hasn’t. The real blocker was never the technology. It is whether the model is financeable (able to attract funding) against low-income demand.
The gap
Grid extension is high-capex (heavy upfront cost), slow, and uneconomic for dispersed, low-consumption households. Mini-grids and solar home systems reach them: the hardware is proven. The wall is the business case at low ARPU (average revenue per user, the small amount each customer pays): cost-reflective tariffs (prices set high enough to cover the cost of supply), mini-grid licensing, and finance that closes against thin household revenue. Solve the model, not the panel.
Stop funding wire to nowhere. The lever that attracts funding is the licensing-and-tariff package that makes decentralized delivery investable, and brings in the ~$90bn of private capital public funds can't supply alone.
Source: World Bank / IEA / IRENA: Tracking SDG7 2025; ESMAP mini-grid outlook 2022; GOGLA off-grid solar 2025
People reached, measured on different bases, illustrative of scale, not one set of numbers you can add together. Access deficit is 2023 actual (Tracking SDG7 2025). 'Could reach by 2030' are scenario ceilings (ESMAP mini-grid roadmap; GOGLA off-grid solar). 'Served to date' is cumulative people reached by off-grid solar (GOGLA 2025). 'On current pace' is ESMAP's business-as-usual mini-grid trajectory: $37bn invested against the $127bn required.
Source: GAPTIQ engine: challenge decomposition
- 2022ESMAP (the World Bank's energy-access program) sets the roadmap: $127bn and 217,000 mini-grids to reach 490M by 2030
- Apr 2024World Bank + AfDB (the African Development Bank) launch Mission 300: 300M Africans connected by 2030, roughly half off-grid
- Jan 202512 governments sign National Energy Compacts: transparent licensing, cost-reflective tariffs
- Jun 2025Tracking SDG7 (the UN goal of clean energy for all): 666M still without power, the deficit barely moving
Source: World Bank: ESMAP 2022; Mission 300; Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit, Dar es Salaam, Jan 2025; Tracking SDG7 2025
The move
The opening is regulatory and financial, not another panel. Whoever standardizes mini-grid licensing and a low-ARPU tariff model, and packages it so development finance (money from development banks) can fund it at scale, converts a 666-million-person access gap into the largest greenfield (built-from-scratch) utility market of the decade. The 12 compacts signed in Dar es Salaam are the starting gun: they commit governments to precisely the licensing and tariff reforms the model has been waiting on.
Source: Energy access has improved, yet international financial support is still needed (Tracking SDG7 2025), World Bank / IEA / IRENA / UNSD / WHO, June 2025. Surfaced by the GAPTIQ engine.
