In 2002, only slightly more than 20% of sub-Saharan Africa's entire population had access to electricity, compared to 85% in North Africa, Latin America, East Asia and the Middle East, and 40% in South Asia (Saghir 2005, p. 9). By 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that slightly more than 30% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa had access to electricity (IEA 2011). In many countries, such as Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burkina Faso, less than 15% of populations had access to electricity; only four countries in sub-Saharan Africa of twenty-eight countries documented by the IEA in its 2011 World Energy Outlook – Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa – had access-to-electricity rates greater than 50% (IEA 2011). ‘There is a chronic shortage of electricity supply in at least 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. At 68,000 megawatts (MW), the entire generation capacity of the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa is no more than that of Spain’ (ICA 2010). In 2007, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) required $7 billion a year in investment solely for new power generation capacity; if financing for transmission and distribution systems are added, annual investment would need to increase by $30 billion per year (Vedavalli 2007, p. 348).

The gulf between demand for electricity and supply in sub-Saharan Africa has reinvigorated the international community's focus on investments in large-scale electricity infrastructure. In light of the global financial situation that emerged in 2009, the Infrastructure Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and other bilateral agencies established new financing instruments for infrastructure that had a principal aim of facilitating private investment at a time when access to capital was becoming more challenging. Examples of financing instruments included the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), the African Development Bank's Emergency Liquidity Facility, the World Bank's Infrastructure Recovery and Assets (INFRA) platform, and the IFC's Infrastructure Crisis Facility. In June 2013, US President Barack Obama also announced $7 billion in financial support and loan guarantees for mobilizing investments in and access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Under ‘Power Africa’ the US Government aimed to work with the private sector, governments and international institutions to add upwards of 10,000 megawatts of electricity to the sub-continent by 2018.