The Six Hundred Million

The problem

Nearly half of sub-Saharan Africa lives without electricity. The International Energy Agency put the number at about 600 million people in 2024, 47 percent of the region's population, in a world where the number without power everywhere else is falling toward zero. Electricity is the precondition for everything else this catalog proposes for the continent: the clinic's refrigerator, the school's screen, the factory's line, the data centre the Tongue Commons of № 115 will need. A quarter of the world's working-age people in 2050 will be African, by № 006's arithmetic, and half of them, on current trends, will have grown up in the dark.

The United States knew this and built a programme for it. Power Africa, launched in 2013, coordinated the government's development finance, its export credit and its diplomats behind private power projects, and by 2023 had helped 14,000 megawatts of new generation reach financial close and 41 million homes and businesses connect, against a goal of 30,000 megawatts and 60 million connections by 2030. It was the most successful American development programme in a generation by the numbers it set itself, and in 2025 it was shut down with the agency that ran it.

The grid is being built anyway, by China, which has financed and constructed a large share of Africa's new generation and transmission over the past two decades on terms that leave the assets owned by Chinese state lenders until the loans are repaid, and often after. The buildout is not in question. Its ownership is. № 006 made the argument for ports and rail: America underwrites, Africans own, both collect the dividends. The grid is the largest asset on the continent and the one most people will touch every day.

The proposal

The Six Hundred Million: an American guarantee programme for African electrification, on the model of № 006, targeting 300 million new connections by 2040. The Development Finance Corporation guarantees the debt; African utilities, cooperatives and the public own the assets; every household connected receives a share in the utility that connected it; and the programme pays developers per verified connection, not per megawatt announced. The Fund holds a minority stake and collects a dividend. The Builder Corps of № 110 trains the linemen.

How it would work

1. The guarantee. The Development Finance Corporation, whose authority is raised for the purpose, guarantees the debt of qualifying generation, transmission and distribution projects in partner countries, up to $20 billion a year, so that the projects borrow at American rates rather than the 8 to 10 percent African sovereigns pay. The guarantee is the underwriting; the capital is mostly private.

1. The ownership. The assets are owned by the host country's utility, by cooperatives on the American rural model of the 1930s, or by public-private companies in which the public's share is a majority. No project the programme guarantees may be owned by a foreign state or its lenders. The Fund of № 001 takes a minority stake, under the Index Rule's exception for the Marshall Compact, and collects a dividend that appears on № 050's report.

1. The household's share. Every household connected receives a share in the distribution company that connected it, on the model of the rural electric cooperatives that wired the American countryside and still serve 42 million people. The customer is an owner, the utility answers to its members, and the dividend, when there is one, arrives with the bill.

1. Paid per connection. Developers and utilities are paid a fixed sum per household connected and verified, by meter and by audit, rather than per megawatt of capacity built. Capacity without connection is what a great deal of African generation has been; the payment follows the wire to the house.

1. Grid and off-grid, both. Half the 600 million will be reached most cheaply by extending grids; half by solar mini-grids and home systems. The programme guarantees both, at the per-connection rate, and lets the geography decide.

1. The linemen. The Builder Corps of № 110 supplies the American linemen and engineers, each training two local apprentices, so that the distribution companies are staffed by their own people within a decade. A grid that needs a foreign crew to repair it is a grid that will fail.

1. The count. Connections verified, by country and by year, against the target, published annually with the guarantees issued and the defaults, if any. The programme's measure is households with a light, and nothing else.

The numbers

The target. 300 million connections by 2040, half the gap, at an average cost per connection of about $500 to $1,500 depending on geography: on the order of $300 billion over fifteen years, or $20 billion a year.

The American share. Guarantees of up to $20 billion a year, with an expected loss rate on infrastructure guarantees of a few percent: a budget cost on the order of $1 billion a year, plus the Fund's stake, which is an investment rather than a cost. Power Africa achieved 41 million connections on a fraction of that.

The return. Electrified households in Africa see incomes rise, children study longer, and clinics keep vaccines cold; the studies put the return on electrification at several times its cost. The Fund's dividend is the smaller return and the honest one to count.

The comparison. China's lending to African power projects has run to tens of billions of dollars over two decades. The programme matches the scale and reverses the ownership.

The honest objections

"This is aid by another name, and the guarantees will be called." Some will, and the loss rate is budgeted in the open at a few percent. What the programme is not is a grant: the capital is private and African, the assets are owned locally, and the Fund collects a dividend. Power Africa's record of 14,000 megawatts on a modest budget is the evidence that guarantees mobilise capital that grants do not.

"African utilities are bankrupt and cannot own anything." Many are, which is why item 2 permits cooperatives and public-private companies with majority public ownership, and why item 3 makes the customers owners with a reason to pay. The rural cooperatives that wired America were built by farmers with no capital and a federal guarantee, and they are still there.

"Paying per connection will produce connections nobody uses." It will produce some, and the verification is by meter over time, not by a single inspection. A connection that draws no power after a year is not paid. The alternative measure, megawatts built, has produced power plants with no customers, which is worse.

"China builds faster and cheaper, and Africa will take the cheaper offer." China builds faster and owns the result; the programme builds nearly as fast and Africans own the result. Governments that have watched the terms of Chinese power loans over two decades are, by every account, looking for the second offer. This is the second offer.

"Solar home systems are not electrification; they are a lightbulb and a phone charger." They are the first rung, and for a hundred million people in places no grid will reach for decades, they are the rung that exists. The programme guarantees the grid where the grid is the answer and the panel where it is not, and pays the same per household either way.

Sources

• International Energy Agency, Electricity access continues to improve in 2024 and Financing Electricity Access in Africa (2025)
• Power Africa, Annual Report 2023, generation reaching financial close and connections; Resources for the Future, Pulling the Plug on Power Africa (2025)
• U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, authorities and portfolio, dfc.gov
• National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, on the cooperative model and its history under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936
• Lee, Miguel and Wolfram, "Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification," Journal of Political Economy (2020), and the broader literature on electrification returns
• Proposals № 001 (The American Dividend); № 006 (The Marshall Compact); № 050 (The Shareholder's Report); № 065 (The Index Rule); № 110 (The Builder Corps); № 112 (The Subsea Compact, forthcoming); № 115 (The Tongue Commons, forthcoming)