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African governments have set ambitious renewable energy targets for 2030, aiming to triple or quintuple renewable generation capacity. The rapid uptake of embedded generation, alongside ongoing reforms to electricity laws, market structures and procurement frameworks, shows that power sectors are already changing. The International Energy Agency estimates that achieving Africa’s energy and climate goals by 2030 will require more than USD 200 billion in annual energy investment — while around 600 million people in Africa still lack access to electricity.

Civil society is critical both to accelerating renewable deployment and to ensuring equitable transitions through meaningful participation and accountability. Yet the highly technical and often closed nature of energy law-making limits CSOs’ ability to play this role. Many African power sector laws were designed for centralised fossil-fuel systems and are not well suited to equitable transitions — outdated, rigid, and in some cases shaped by fossil fuel interests, making clean energy risky and expensive to finance even
as solar and wind costs fall.

At the same time, pressure from financiers is driving fast reforms, often to unbundle power systems, with significant implications for whether transitions prioritise public benefit or investor returns. Without stronger legal frameworks, greater transparency and participation, and increased civil society capacity to engage these spaces, renewable energy transitions risk being too slow, inequitable, or captured by interests that do not serve long-term development, justice and the public interest.