Africa enters 2026 with an energy landscape shifting under the pressure of economic demand, population growth and global market uncertainty. The African Energy Chamber recently released its annual State of African Energy 2026 Outlook, marking one of the most comprehensive snapshots of the sector.
Compiled by the Chamber’s research and policy analysis team, the report tracks production trends, investment flows and electricity access in 54 countries, offering an evidence-based picture of where Africa’s energy future is heading, and where gaps are emerging.
The report begins with production fundamentals. Oil and gas remain the backbone of African energy systems. Output is rising, but the distribution of growth is uneven. Established producers such as Algeria, Nigeria, Angola and Libya continue to anchor supply but rely heavily on capital injections, upgrades and maintenance to prevent output decline.
Meanwhile, newer exploration hotspots; Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mozambique and Mauritania, now command a greater share of frontier activity. These markets have moved from marginal status to central nodes of continental investment as discoveries, fiscal reforms and licensing rounds draw operators that once ignored their acreage.
Financing stands out as the determining variable in whether those prospects translate into material output. The report notes that Africa will require sustained multi-billion-dollar annual capital commitments simply to maintain existing production, with far higher spending needed to expand it. Yet investors from Europe and North America are increasingly selective, redirecting portfolios and exiting legacy assets.
Many national oil companies have stepped in to run blocks divested by global majors, but the capacity of NOCs to replace decades of international capital remains constrained. The forthcoming African Energy Bank, an institution co-owned by Afreximbank and African Petroleum Producers, is expected to provide partial relief when it begins operations later in 2025, though it cannot fully close the financing shortfall.
Natural gas receives the widest analytical treatment. New supply lines from offshore discoveries in Senegal and Mauritania, Mozambique’s vast resource base and additional Nigerian production are positioned to make gas a defining fuel of the next decade. But the report is explicit: without pipelines, LNG trains, processing hubs and ports, countries risk holding gas they cannot sell or consume.
Several major projects remain behind schedule or face unresolved financing structures, illustrating the gap between reserves counted on spreadsheets and usable energy reaching industry and households. Infrastructure, not geology, will decide whether gas supports industrialisation or becomes another deferred promise.
Electricity access is where energy trends are most visible to ordinary people. Demand is rising faster than supply in nearly every region. The report shows manufacturing and services expanding in East and West Africa, but grid instability continues to suppress growth. Morocco, Egypt and South Africa, during periods of consistent renewable procurement, provide examples of how stable policy and predictable tariffs can attract investment.
Elsewhere, ageing grids, high losses, and weak planning prevent generation from reaching homes, farms and factories. The Chamber identifies regional interconnections through Africa’s power pools as one of the few scalable ways to close access gaps without each country building sufficient capacity on its own.
Renewables advance but still struggle to meet their potential. Installation rates for solar and wind continue to climb, supported by global developers and concessional finance, yet Africa remains a small share of global clean energy capital flows. Regulatory uncertainty and currency volatility remain the principal barriers to scale.
Read also: Tunisia commissions 120MW Kairouan Solar Plant in major boost to energy security
Countries with coherent frameworks; Kenya in geothermal, Egypt in solar, South Africa in wind corridors, demonstrate domestic capacity for speed and scale. Others, despite abundant sunshine and wind, have not translated resource advantage into real megawatts.
The report’s treatment of the energy transition is grounded in fiscal constraint rather than global rhetoric. African governments depend on hydrocarbons for revenue, employment and foreign exchange at the same time they pursue cleaner power systems.
With population growth outpacing electrification, the Chamber positions transition as a sequencing issue: hydrocarbons will continue to fund state budgets and fill power gaps while renewables expand. Policymakers are therefore tasked not with abandoning oil and gas, but with extracting more development value from them.
Industrialisation and employment give the report its developmental weight. Without refining capacity and processing industries, the continent will continue exporting crude and LNG while importing refined fuels, petrochemicals and industrial products. For governments managing youth unemployment, this distinction is material. The Chamber argues that downstream expansion, local supply chains and skills transfer should sit alongside upstream investments if energy wealth is to lift incomes rather than bypass them.
By the end of the document, Africa’s energy outlook emerges as dynamic and consequential. Oil remains essential, gas is ascendant, and renewables are accelerating where policy and finance align. Whether these trends translate into affordable power, lower import dependence and broader economic resilience will depend on how quickly investment, infrastructure and institutional capacity move from report pages to the ground.
Engage with us on LinkedIn: Africa Sustainability Matters
