The World Bank and African Development Bank say Mission 300 will bring electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030. It sounds urgent and necessary — 600 million people still live without power. But look closer, and it’s the same neoliberal playbook that already failed once.
Mission 300 leans on private investors “de-risking” with public money — guaranteeing their profits while burdening African governments with billions in new debt. It pushes utilities toward “100% cost recovery,” starving public power systems of the capacity to actually expand. We’ve seen this before: the AfDB’s New Deal on Energy promised universal access by 2025. Today, half of sub-Saharan Africa is still in the dark.
The Peoples Dialogue will unpack what Mission 300 really means and why people’s movements and energy sector unions are demanding a different path: reclaiming and restoring public utilities, not privatising them by another name.
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