According to the African Union the AFSEM is meant to, ‘achieve a fully integrated, competitive and harmonized electricity market in order to accelerate Africa’s development and improve access for the benefit of
African citizens.’ Yet, it is not clear how these will be achieved. The amount of coordination between 55 member states of the African Union required to develop, finance and construct the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure to achieve a fully integrated market in less than two decades is unprecedented in modern history. Africa’s installed generation capacity is about 286.7 GW. Compare this to China, the
largest electricity market in the world, with an installed generation capacity of 2,564.05 Gigawatts (GW), serving about 1.4 billion people, as of 2022. To fully electrify its 1.3 billion people, AU member-states would have to install the energy infrastructure required to deliver over 2,380.9 GW to its citizens. While
some scholars believe that the regional economic communities and geopolitical organizations—such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA)—will play an important role in achieving the AFSEM, it is not clear what that role will be.
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