Photo: dhahi alsaeedi / Unsplash
The numbers behind this month's issue, on one page
Prices, levelised costs, the generation mix of nine African markets and ten market signals. Every figure carries its source and date, and the Nigeria rows match the Nigeria Power page for the same quarter.
Two of the three prices on this bar fell, and the one that rose is the one Africa pays
Brent at $111 on 22 October was up 13% over the month. EU carbon fell to €82.40, a seven-week low. Stationary storage packs reached $70 per kWh, down 45% year on year and the cheapest battery segment for the first time.
Those three pull an African developer two ways at once. Crude is the exception. Expensive crude makes diesel self-generation dearer, which helps anything that displaces a generator. A softer carbon price narrows the offset arbitrage that was supposed to bring external revenue to the same projects. Cheap storage is the one unambiguous gain, and it is the input that decides whether a mini-grid can sell evening load at a price a household will pay.
Bottom line: If storage keeps falling while carbon softens, project revenue has to come from the tariff rather than from offsets, and the tariff is set where collection runs at 81.06%. The financing case for African distributed energy is moving back onto the balance sheet of the least reliable counterparty in the chain.
Committed, and not yet connected
This issue's argument is that four of October's largest numbers are commitments, targets and forecasts rather than measured outcomes. The cards below hold both kinds side by side, which is the only way to see which is which.
The count is large and the remainder is larger
The official count passed 50 million across 40 countries, with Tanzania at 7.5 million, Ethiopia at 4.6 million and Nigeria above 4.5 million. What a connection certifies has not been published. Sources: World Bank Mission 300 overview and the press release of 16 June 2026. Still to connect is a TCL calculation.
A year of repricing, and an October on top of it
Three dated observations rather than a continuous series. The September 2025 figure is historical and shown for scale, not as a current price. The World Bank put the 2026 average at $91 and gave 2027 as $79 to $105, baseline against adverse. Sources: Fortune oil price reports and Nairametrics for October 2026; World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook, 28 October 2026.
Levelised cost of energy
Two datasets, kept apart on purpose. Lazard publishes unsubsidised ranges built on United States assumptions, which is why the spreads are wide. BloombergNEF publishes single global benchmarks. Neither is an African number, and both understate African capital costs, so read them as direction rather than as a quote.
Every technology got more expensive
Bars show the low to high range. Lazard attributes the increase to higher capital costs, sustained interest rates, tariff pass-through and supply chain repricing, and notes the range widened for onshore wind and utility-scale solar as high-end costs rose faster than low-end ones. Source: Lazard LCOE+ 2026, published 15 July 2026.
Storage is the only line still falling
Green marks a falling cost, red a rising one, following the house price signal rule. Separately, BloombergNEF's December 2025 price survey put stationary storage packs at $70 per kWh, down 45% in a year and the cheapest battery segment for the first time. Sources: BloombergNEF, 18 February 2026 and 9 December 2025.
Bottom line: A tender designed around a falling solar cost curve is now designed around a curve that has stopped falling. The projects that still clear are the ones where storage carries the evening peak, and procurement documents written before 2026 do not price that.
Grid composition, nine markets
Africa generated 42% of its electricity from gas and 24% from coal in 2025, with renewables at 26% and clean sources at 27% in total. Renewables passed coal across the continent for the first time. The continental average hides nine completely different problems.
Nigeria
NERC reference figures, 2026- Gas78%
- Hydro19%
- Solar3%
TCL uses NERC's grid basis, matching the Nigeria Power page. Consumption-basis datasets give 65% gas and 35% hydro, recording no solar at all.
South Africa
Apr 2025 to Mar 2026- Coal79%
- Solar9%
- Wind5%
- Nuclear5%
- Hydro1%
- Other1%
Coal hit a record monthly low of 70% in December 2025 as clean generation reached 29%.
Egypt
2025- Gas76%
- Oil10%
- Hydro7%
- Solar5%
- Other2%
Home of Project Ra, which took $3.55 million of this cycle's SEFA hydrogen award.
Kenya
May 2025 to Apr 2026- Geothermal42%
- Hydro23%
- Wind12%
- Imports10%
- Gas7%
- Solar6%
Geothermal alone beats most countries' entire clean fleet. Kenya proved the resource works and not that the financing travels.
Ghana
2023- Gas60%
- Hydro38%
- Other2%
Chairs the African Group of Negotiators into COP31. Low-carbon generation peaked in 1980.
Ethiopia
2023- Hydro96%
- Wind3%
- Other1%
Close to a single-source grid, which is a resilience exposure as much as a clean-energy achievement.
Morocco
Apr 2025 to Mar 2026- Coal54%
- Wind20%
- Gas9%
- Imports9%
- Solar4%
- Hydro3%
- Other1%
The largest wind share on this board, sitting on top of the second-largest coal share.
Zambia
2023- Hydro88%
- Coal11%
- Solar1%
A hydro monoculture, and the reason drought reads straight through to load shedding.
Tanzania
2023- Gas73%
- Hydro24%
- Other3%
Predates the Julius Nyerere hydropower ramp, so treat this as the pre-expansion baseline.
Centre figure is the clean share, counting hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear. Shares are rounded to whole percentages and sum to 100. Data vintage differs by country and is stated on each card, so these are comparable in structure rather than in date. Sources: NERC for Nigeria, Ember and Low Carbon Power for the rest.
Bottom line: Ethiopia at 96% hydro and Zambia at 88% are not clean-energy success stories so much as single-point-of-failure grids, and drought reads straight through to load shedding in both. Diversification is the adaptation measure that gets discussed least.
Market signals
Ten indicators, each with a direction and a reason it matters to capital allocation. Nigeria figures match the Nigeria Power page for the same quarter.
| Indicator | Reading | Signal | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent crude | $111 per barrel on 22 October, up 13% over the month Nairametrics | Caution | Elevated crude lifts the cost of diesel self-generation, the real competitor to African grid and mini-grid supply. |
| EU carbon | €82.40 per tonne, a seven-week low S&P Global, 5 Oct 2026 | Caution | A softer EUA price narrows the arbitrage that makes African offset supply attractive. The direction reversed this cycle. |
| Storage pack, stationary | $70 per kWh, down 45% year on year BloombergNEF, 9 Dec 2025 | Confirmed | The steepest fall of any battery segment, and the first time stationary storage was the cheapest category. |
| Solar and wind LCOE | Up 6% and 2% globally in 2025 BloombergNEF and Lazard LCOE+ 2026 | Negative | The decade-long decline has stopped. Capital costs, interest rates and supply chain repricing now dominate module price. |
| Mission 300 | Over 50 million people connected, definition unpublished World Bank, 16 Jun 2026 | Caution | The largest electrification count ever reported in Africa, against a target of 300 million. What a connection certifies is not stated. |
| Nigeria ATC&C losses | 36.23% in Q2 2026 against a 16.92% MYTO target NERC Q2 2026 | Negative | More than twice the regulated allowance. Every naira of tariff reform leaks through this gap before it reaches a generator. |
| Nigeria collection efficiency | 81.06% collected, 78.67% billed in Q2 2026 NERC Q2 2026 | Negative | Collection improved by 2.11 points and billing efficiency did not follow, so the gain is in chasing bills rather than issuing them. |
| Nigeria annualised loss | ₦1.372 trillion a year, ₦731bn of it avoidable TCL calculation from NERC | Negative | Each percentage point of ATC&C improvement is worth about ₦37.86 billion a year. That is the size of the prize for metering. |
| Nigeria DARES | $750m fund, half of it publicly contested on 30 October ThisDay | Caution | NERC asked the World Bank to move half the fund to transmission and distribution. A regulator contesting an approved programme is unusual. |
| SEFA hydrogen award | $20m of grants against $23bn of project cost AfDB via REGlobal | Caution | About one dollar of grant for every 1,150 dollars of project. Preparation money, not a financing event. |
Signal key. Confirmed means two independent sources agree and the direction is favourable. Caution means the reading is mixed or single-source. Negative means the indicator is moving against deployment.
Bottom line: Four of the ten rows are commitments rather than outcomes, and three of the four Nigerian rows are measured. That asymmetry is the issue in one table. The numbers that can be audited are the ones moving the wrong way, and the numbers moving the right way are the ones nobody has defined.
Method. Every figure on this page is generated from one data file, so the price bar, the KPI cards, the editorial anchor, the charts and the Market Signals table cannot disagree with each other. Shares in each donut sum to exactly 100 and each arc length is drawn in proportion to its percentage, both checked programmatically before publication.
Price colours. Falling prices render red and rising prices render copper, so a glance at the top bar reads correctly without the numbers. Two of the three lines are falling this cycle.
Known conflict. Nigeria's mix is shown on NERC's reference basis at 78% gas, 19% hydro and 3% solar and other. Consumption-basis datasets give 65% gas and 35% hydro for the twelve months to April 2026 and record no solar at all. Both are printed rather than reconciled silently, and the gap is itself the story: grid-connected solar is small enough that different methods disagree about whether it exists.
Comparability. Lazard's ranges and BloombergNEF's benchmarks are separate datasets built on different assumptions and are never combined into one chart. Neither is an African cost. Grid mix vintages differ by country and are stated on each card. Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania still sit on 2023 data and move as soon as Ember publishes.
Not investment advice. This page is editorial research. Prices move after publication. Email blogpost@theclimateledger.org with corrections.
Refreshed each issue. Next refresh: Issue 10, December 2026.