How Private Players Can Strengthen Africa’s Power Transmission Market

In early February, Uganda’s Amari power transmission project became the first independent transmission project (ITP) in Africa to reach the construction phase.

The US$50 million scheme will upgrade the transforming capacity of four key high-voltage substations, with the objectives of improving electricity supply to industrial users, enabling the uptake of more renewable energy onto the grid and providing capacity to support future cross-border interconnections.

The Amari milestone highlights the growing number of African governments beginning to work with the private sector to develop and fund critical electricity grid infrastructure. Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa said her government is committed to “mobilising sustainable private capital and expertise to accelerate the delivery of priority energy investments”.

The conversation on the energy transition across the continent is now starting to shift from simply adding clean megawatts to actually building the transmission infrastructure that will enable the operation of those renewable energy projects. There is a growing consensus that the expansion of transmission networks is crucial to helping countries see faster investment, more resilient power systems and broader economic benefits.

The numbers portray the urgency of the situation. According to the Empower Africa organisation, 565 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity while 4 in 5 of those people live in rural areas where grid extension is costly and logistically difficult. Meanwhile, companies operating on the continent currently face an average of a week of outages each month. Add to this the fact that the majority of public utilities in the region are among the most indebted of state-owned enterprises and the case becomes clearer for private funding of transmission projects.

Gridworks Development Partners, the Amari project’s developer, views the scheme’s progress as a breakthrough for private sector participation in grid infrastructure on the continent. The company is a subsidiary of British International Investment (BII), the UK government’s development finance institution. It expects the ITP market to develop in a way comparable to the independent power production (IPP) market, which is now well established and regulated across Africa.

“ITPs are gaining traction because many African governments recognise transmission infrastructure is critical for economic growth, grid reliability and electricity access, but they recognise that current financing models are insufficient to meet the scale of the need,” Adel Serhal, business development manager at Gridworks, tells ConstructAfrica.

“Many governments simply can’t finance the scale of grid expansion required. State utilities across the continent often have weak balance sheets and limited borrowing capacity, while public debt levels have limited the fiscal headroom available. As a result, governments are looking for ways to mobilise private capital for infrastructure rather than relying solely on state funding.”

The ITP model offers a practical solution, notes Serhal, allowing private developers and investors to finance, build and sometimes operate transmission lines, while the national utility pays for the service through a long-term transmission agreement.

“This structure brings in private capital, spreads risk more effectively between the public and private sectors, and delivers new infrastructure quickly.”

Along with the Amari scheme, Gridworks is working on another ITP within Uganda – the 132kV Mbale-Bulambuli-Kween transmission line in the country’s east on the border with Kenya, also known as the Gamani transmission project. The infrastructure to be built comprises the 63km Mbale-Bulambuli and 13km Bulambuli-Kapterol lines along with two new substations, one at Mbale Industrial Park, which will be built as an extension to the existing station, and one at Kapterol in the Kween district.

The line is a striking example of why the expansion of the grid is so desperately needed in Africa – it will enable the evacuation of up to 250MW of new renewable energy capacity onto Uganda’s grid and pave the way for the construction of at least 15 hydropower plants in the Mount Elgon region with a combined estimated capacity of 100MW; the development of these facilities had stalled due to the absence of transmission infrastructure.

The line will also support the construction of a proposed 150MW solar photovoltaic (PV) farm near Bulambuli, which will be built by the UAE’s Masdar as part of the first phase of a 1GW solar park.

In addition, the Mbale-Kween line will provide the backbone for the extension of existing medium and low-voltage lines to connect communities and trading centres within its footprint, delivering reliable power to the industries located in the Mbale region, including the industrial park, as well as improving supply to the growing population in Bulambuli, Kween and the wider Mount Elgon region.

In June 2025, Gridworks applied for a licence to undertake feasibility studies and other activities for the project’s development. In December 2024, the firm signed a joint development agreement with the Ugandan government.

In East Africa, Gridworks is also pursuing two ITPs in Ethiopia, signing an agreement in February with the government to develop and invest in the country’s first two privately financed transmission projects, with a combined value of around US$400 million.

⚡Big milestone for Ethiopia’s power sector & for Africa’s electricity grids.

We've signed a major agreement with the 🇪🇹 government to develop & invest in Ethiopia's first privately financed transmission projects, valued around US$400m.@UKinEthiopia https://t.co/v3Js3Xwhfh

— Gridworks (@GridworksLLP) February 3, 2026

The scope involves building the 206km 132kV Degehabur-Kebridehar line connecting the Somali region with the country’s central and northeast grids; and the 198km 400kV Hurso-Ayisha line enabling the development of new sources of energy in the northeast and strengthening the interconnection with Djibouti.

The ITPs will increase energy provision to meet growing industrial demand, boost the uptake of more sources of energy, strengthen Ethiopia’s grid and enable interconnection with neighbouring countries. They will also support rural electrification in the long-term across Africa’s second most populous nation.

Ethiopia’s case for embracing ITPs stems from the high industrial demand for reliable power and the fact that about half of the population lacks electricity access.

In southern Africa, Gridworks is developing the Linha de Transporte de Energia Chimuara-Nacala (LTEC) scheme in Mozambique, also a first-time participant in the ITP market.

The scheme is being executed in phases and the infrastructure includes a 272km 400kV line from Alto Molocue to Namialo, a 98km 220kV line from Namialo to Nampula and a 90km 220kV transmission line from Namialo to Nacala-a-Velha, with two new substations at Namialo and Nacala-a-Velha and the expansion of the Nampula substation.

The aim is to strengthen and increase the reliability of the transmission infrastructure connecting the central and northern regions of Mozambique, areas of which have the lowest electricity access rates in the country (18-25%). The LTEC project will also enable the transmission of solar and hydropower to the northern region as well as boost industrial growth.

As of January, the scheme had received backing from the US International Development Finance Corporation and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). Progress had also been made on environmental, social and governance studies while preliminary geotechnical and technical design studies were completed. In 2026, Gridworks is looking to advance ESG studies and financing discussions.

“We think our projects in Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia and elsewhere – and those of other private sector developers on the continent – reflect a broad shift toward public-private partnerships that unlock private capital for grid expansion, in a similar way to how independent power producers transformed the electricity generation market in Africa over the past 30 years,” says Serhal.

Lessons learnt by the developer on these projects are that close government collaboration and clear regulatory frameworks are essential for success.

“For example, the Amari project progressed to construction because the government of Uganda established the legal and contractual platform to attract private finance,” says Serhal. “Once governments and other partners see these pilot projects succeed then they act as reference projects to catalyse more private sector investment in the sector. So, it’s important to have well-structured bankable pilot projects to set the right precedent.

“We’ve learned the ITP model also fits very easily into existing public-private partnership laws of most countries on the continent, so there is no regulatory change required to implement it and can be used as a template for more projects involving the private sector.

“We've also learned that first-of-kind projects require committed, patient development capital and strong local partnerships, the combination of which builds in-country capacity and signals to markets that the model is replicable. As these projects reach financial close and construction, they lay the groundwork for the more ambitious cross-border corridors that are essential to unlocking the region's renewable energy potential at scale.

Serhal notes another lesson learnt by Gridworks is that private investment can serve multiple national goals at once: strengthening grid reliability, enabling industrial growth and integrating more renewables generation by reducing bottlenecks.

“We’re seeing that in our new projects in Ethiopia, as well as in LTEC,” he says. “Across markets, Gridworks’ experience shows ITPs can catalyse new investment, create jobs during construction and reduce financial pressure on government budgets by mobilising commercial and development capital.”

Meanwhile, Gridworks and other private developers will have to look at how to mitigate the risk of vandalism of transmission infrastructure, which is a serious problem in several African countries. A September 2024 report by Uganda’s Electricity Regulatory Authority emphasised the rise in vandalism cases, noting that the cost of vandalised materials had reached Ugandan Shilling 400 million (US$106,357). Theft is affecting high-capacity transmission lines as well, such as the 400kV Karuma-Kawanda evacuation line, which was deliberately damaged before it could be commissioned, delaying the integration of the 600MW Karuma hydropower plant into the national grid.

According to Serhal, Gridworks approaches vandalism risk by thinking about how projects are designed and how it engages with local communities.

“First, transmission infrastructure is engineered with robust materials, security protocols and remote monitoring to deter theft and damage, and to detect outages quickly in real time,” he says. “Second, Gridworks emphasises community engagement and local ownership by working with national utilities and stakeholders to ensure local populations see the grid as a shared asset – we think this approach can cut down on deliberate damage. Third, resilience is built into the project structure from the outset so that when incidents occur, there are clear mechanisms and resources to restore service quickly and minimise disruption.”

Notwithstanding the risks involved, consensus is indeed growing on the need for ITPs across the continent.

Along with the five transmission projects it is working on in Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia, Gridworks is developing several additional schemes across the continent.

Kenya and South Africa are also advancing with hundreds of kilometres of ITPs as governments wake up to the scale of the investment needed – the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates Sub-Saharan Africa will need annual energy-access investments exceeding US$30 billion up to 2030 – as well as the mismatch in the time required to plan and build new grids compared to generation projects. Planning, permitting and completing new grid infrastructure can take anywhere from 5 to 15 years, whereas new builds on the supply and demand side are much faster, at 1-5 years for renewables projects such as solar PV and wind.

To harness its potential to become the next frontier for global economic growth, Africa needs to get going on ITPs and it needs to get going now.

Top photo: Grid infrastructure (Source: Gridworks Development Partners)