Powering Development? Chinese Energy Investment, Artificial Intelligence, and Local Electrification in Africa (Applied and Computational Engineering)

Summary

• In 2023, roughly 666 million people lived without access to electricity, with 85 percent of them located in Sub-Saharan Africa.p.1
• The Chinese Loans to Africa (CLA) Database registered 1,319 commitments worth US$180.87 billion between 2000 and 2024, with energy as the largest sector at US$66.08 billion (36.5 percent).p.2
• Cross-country empirical analysis of 18 Sub-Saharan nations reveals no statistically significant correlation between cumulative Chinese energy loans and national electricity access gains (r = -0.08, p = 0.75).p.1
• Chinese energy lending was heavily concentrated, with Angola absorbing 41 percent of total energy loans, while hydropower (US$23.85 billion) and oil (US$20.75 billion) dominated the portfolio.p.3
• Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) off-grid solar increased its affiliate sales share from 24 percent in 2018 to 39 percent in 2023, generating 94 percent of affiliate sales growth.p.4
• Achieving SDG 7 decentralized power targets requires an estimated US$95 billion, compared to just US$1.2 billion invested in 2022-23.p.2

Key insights

1. Aggregate household electricity access gains across Sub-Saharan Africa show no detectable statistical association with total cumulative Chinese energy lending.p.1
2. More than half of Chinese DFI energy funding in Africa supported fossil-fuel extraction and generation rather than distributed local end-user connections.p.3
3. Angola absorbed 41 percent of Chinese energy loans but achieved access gains below the sample median, whereas Kenya borrowed modestly and gained +61.0 points in access rate.p.4
4. Off-grid solar represents the lowest-cost path to electrification for 41 percent—or 398 million—of the people needing power access by 2030.p.4
5. Severe affordability barriers persist as only 22 percent of unelectrified households can afford a Tier 1 solar home system at current market prices.p.4
6. Machine learning addresses critical information deficits by identifying unelectrified settlements via satellite images and predicting loan repayment through mobile-phone metadata.p.2
7. Artificial intelligence data centres increased their global electricity consumption by 17 percent in 2025 and are projected to triple demand by 2030.p.5