Remarks by Dr. Rajiv J. Shah at the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit

As delivered on Wednesday, January 28, 2025, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you so much, Austin [Makani], for getting us started.

I also want to thank our host, Her Excellency President Samia [Suluhu Hassan]. It’s an honor to be with you and to be in your wonderful country. And I’d like to share my respect, humility, and honor towards all of the Heads of State and Excellencies from across the continent that are demonstrating, by your presence and your leadership, that today is a demonstration of powerful African leadership and a strong African vision of economic growth and success.

I would like to offer a very special thank you to those we seek to help, Akin [Adesina], Ajay [Banga], and your extraordinary teams. We are only here today because each of you made courageous decisions to make extraordinary financial commitments at a time of genuine fiscal need across the continent.

And I would like to highlight that I represent today not just The Rockefeller Foundation, but also the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), a group of philanthropies, partners, and private companies that have come together to try to do what Ajay has asked us to, which is to work together in partnership so we can achieve much more impact as opposed to going at it alone.

Africa has been reaching for electricity for 140 years. Streetlights first arrived in Dar es Salaam in 1908. In an effort to create jobs and advance development, since then, you, the leaders of this great continent, have tamed some of the continent’s mightiest rivers, developed plans and built grids, climbed utility poles and spliced wires.

And yet, despite those efforts, too many African families and businesses lack access to productive power for growth and for jobs. 600 million Africans live without basic electricity access. Another 500 million simply don’t have the productive, affordable, always-on electricity which is an absolute requirement for job creation in a global digital economy.

Africa needs to create millions of jobs, as Ajay just noted, and this effort is ultimately about creating those jobs and allowing for that dignity for those youth that are entering the labor force as Ajay noted. Every year, to do so, we will need to replace expensive diesel generators as the source of power for so many African small businesses with cheap, always-on electricity. And that is what Mission 300 is all about.

It would be easy to be skeptical about whether or not this, the largest public-private partnership on the continent today, designed to lift up hundreds of millions of people, could actually achieve the ambitious targets that Ajay and Akin and all of you respected Heads of State have set for us. I believe there are three reasons why this initiative will succeed when perhaps others over that 140-year history have failed.

First, Mission 300 is led by you, African leaders — your compacts, your commitments, your targets, and, most importantly, your absolute determination to implement the policy reforms that you are signing onto publicly today, offer hope and clarity for the private sector, for philanthropy, and for your development partners. Thank you, and we will follow your lead.

Second, Mission 300 is catalyzing extraordinary concessional resources at a time of absolute fiscal need on this continent. That is a testament to the leadership of the two Banks and Ajay, to you in particular, for bringing us together and kicking this off. I think it will take your private sector background and your determination to hold us all to account to achieve our targets in order to be successful. But to put this level of resources into a single effort with a single quantitative, measurable set of outcomes gives us hope and inspires transformation.

And third, this effort is, in fact, a public-private-philanthropic partnership. It is different from other initiatives I’ve been a part of. Just in the last six months, watching how the teams at the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and each of your nations are collaborating openly, sharing data, using GIS planning to sight new locations for mini grids and other new technology solutions, and being open to new technology solutions that today are at a price point where this vision of success is affordable and possible and, in fact, the least-cost way to provide universal electrification gives me hope that this will, in fact, be different and be successful.

Mission 300 is an opportunity to work together and to work together differently. We pledge support as helpers and quiet helpers at every level of this project to ensure that decades from now, people look back on yesterday and today and say, what happened in Dar es Salaam — much like turning the streetlights on in 1908 — transformed a continent and transformed generations for the future.

Thank you.