African governments have been urged to fundamentally rethink energy policy and move beyond planning primarily for electricity access to building energy systems capable of powering production, industrialisation and value addition.
The call is among the key outcomes of the 2026 Future of Energy Conference (FEC) hosted by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) under the theme: “Powering Africa’s Industrial Transformation: Energy Systems for Value Addition and Competitiveness”.
The gathering which had participants around the continent and beyond identified implementation, energy costs, fragmented policymaking, weak project preparation and inadequate industrial capacity as major barriers to Africa’s economic transformation.
The conference’s top-level takeaways place a particularly strong responsibility on governments to align energy policy with the industries and value chains they want to develop, while ensuring that public resources and incentives generate measurable economic and social returns.
According to the conference action points, energy access remains important, but Africa’s energy systems must increasingly be judged by what they enable economies to produce, process, manufacture and export.
Governments are therefore being asked to plan generation, transmission, distribution and supporting infrastructure around productive demand, particularly industrial, mineral and value-addition priorities, rather than aggregate electricity consumption alone.
The conference also called for a major shift in policymaking, insisting that energy and industrial policy can no longer operate in isolation.
Energy, mining, trade, finance, infrastructure, education and climate policies must be coordinated around clearly defined productive objectives, with governments first identifying the industries and value chains they want to establish and then working backwards to determine the energy, infrastructure, technology, skills and financing required.
Ten top-level takeaways
1. Plan energy for production, not only access
The conference urged governments to make productive use of electricity a central measure of energy-sector performance. Affordable, reliable, scalable power must be available where industries and other productive activities are located.
2. Integrate energy and industrial policy
Governments must break down policy silos and coordinate energy, minerals, trade, finance, infrastructure, education and climate policy around specific industrial objectives and value chains.
3. Turn Africa’s resource advantage into retained value
The continent’s critical minerals, renewable resources, oil and gas will not automatically deliver industrial transformation. Governments must focus on increasing processing, manufacturing, technological capability, enterprise development, jobs and the economic value retained within African economies.
4. Use regional markets and infrastructure to achieve scale
African countries do not all need to build complete value chains independently. Power pools, the African Continental Free Trade Area, infrastructure corridors and regional industrial ecosystems can enable countries to specialise and combine energy, minerals, skills and markets at commercially viable scale.
5. Fix the structure of energy financing and risk
Africa’s financing challenge is not simply a shortage of capital. Poor project preparation, currency mismatches, weak offtakers, regulatory uncertainty and inappropriate risk allocation can make viable projects difficult to finance.
Governments have therefore been cautioned against de-risking projects by simply transferring commercial risks to taxpayers and electricity consumers.
6. Governments must negotiate investment from a position of evidence
The conference urged governments to interrogate the risks, returns, guarantees and incentives demanded by investors instead of accepting them as fixed conditions.
Public incentives should address identifiable barriers, be proportionate to the public benefit and, where appropriate, be tied to measurable performance such as local procurement, skills development, technology transfer and value addition.
7. Build industrial capability alongside infrastructure
Energy infrastructure alone will not deliver industrialisation.
Africa needs engineers, technicians, regulators, project managers, researchers, capable firms and effective institutions, with skills development closely aligned to actual industrial demand.
8. Move from technology deployment to technology absorption
Importing equipment or establishing joint ventures does not automatically create African technological capability.
Countries must develop the capacity to operate, adapt, improve and eventually produce technologies, while creating pathways for African innovations to move from pilots into commercially sustainable enterprises.
9. Make industrialisation and the energy transition socially and environmentally credible
The conference stressed meaningful participation and benefits for communities, workers, women, youth and other affected groups.
It also highlighted the growing importance of credible emissions measurement, reporting and verification as carbon-sensitive international markets increasingly influence investment and trade.
10. Make implementation Africa’s overriding priority
The conference identified implementation as one of Africa’s principal deficits, noting that the continent already has numerous strategies, frameworks and institutions.
The priority, therefore, is to translate existing commitments into a smaller number of clearly defined, financeable and measurable projects and programmes, with institutions responsible for delivery and mechanisms for tracking results.
Governments face key policy actions
The conference’s recommended actions translate these broad conclusions into five immediate areas of government responsibility.
First, governments must plan energy around productive demand, aligning investments in generation, transmission, distribution and infrastructure with industrialisation, mineral development and value addition.
Second, they must strengthen integrated industrial policy coordination, bringing energy, mining, trade, finance, climate, infrastructure and education institutions around common productive objectives.
Third, governments must reduce structural energy costs and improve sector governance, including addressing inefficient contracts, system losses, weak utility performance, currency mismatches and poorly designed subsidies, while linking tariffs more closely to reliability and service quality.
Fourth, governments must improve investment appraisal, incentives and risk allocation, independently testing project economics and investor claims and tying public support to measurable outcomes.
Finally, they must build the institutions, skills, project-preparation systems and emissions-governance frameworks required to translate policy into delivery, while strengthening transparency and accountability.
Regional cooperation
The conference also placed responsibility beyond national governments.
Regional economic communities and continental institutions were urged to accelerate power-market integration, harmonise technical, regulatory and emissions standards, develop regional industrial value chains and establish shared infrastructure and financing platforms.
The recommendations envisage greater use of power pools, cross-border transmission and electricity trading to improve reliability, affordability and resilience, while allowing countries to specialise across minerals, energy, processing, manufacturing and logistics rather than attempting to replicate complete value chains nationally.
Private sector and finance
For the private sector, the message was equally direct: investment must go beyond extraction and asset deployment to support local procurement, supplier development, manufacturing, technology absorption and higher-value productive activities.
Companies were also encouraged to strengthen project feasibility, revenue models, environmental, social and governance documentation, corporate governance and operational systems to improve access to capital.
Financial institutions and investors, meanwhile, were encouraged to provide financing better suited to African realities, including patient capital, blended finance, longer-tenor instruments and greater use of local-currency financing.
The conference also called for better risk differentiation and allocation, with risks assigned to the parties best able to manage them, while concessional and development-finance capital should be used to catalyse investment in early-stage, high-risk and underserved areas.
Research, accountability and implementation
Civil society organisations, research bodies and academic institutions were also assigned a stronger role in Africa’s energy and industrial transformation.
They were urged to scrutinise contracts, subsidies, guarantees, risk pricing, incentives and industrial policies; monitor whether national and continental commitments translate into funded projects and measurable industrial outcomes; and strengthen independent analysis of emissions data and methodologies.
The conference further called for stronger partnerships between industry and academia to align research, curricula, technology development and training with actual industrial and implementation needs, while strengthening public participation and Africa’s policy voice in regional and international energy, trade and climate negotiations.
At the centre of the conference’s recommendations was a call for Africa to move from policy formulation to implementation by translating existing strategies and commitments into a smaller number of clearly defined, financeable and measurable projects, backed by institutions responsible for delivery and mechanisms for tracking results.
The Future of Energy Conference (FEC) is an annual platform that brings together
stakeholders to advance an inclusive, sustainable and competitive energy future for Africa. It provides a strategic space to examine how Africa’s energy systems can support economic
transformation.
By: Christian Kpesese/NR NEWS
