How Africa’s ‘hidden’ resources can change the energy equation

Ayman Essam, Chief Officer: External Affairs, Vodacom Group.

---

Africa's most overlooked energy resource may be energy efficiency. As the continent races to expand generation capacity and works to connect millions more people to reliable electricity, we also need to extract more value from every unit of energy we already produce.

Vodacom's recent decarbonisation report highlights why we need to rethink Africa's energy future. Around 600 million people across the continent still lack access to electricity, yet demand continues to grow as economies digitise, populations expand and connectivity reaches more communities.

New generation capacity, stronger transmission networks and innovative financing mechanisms are essential, but they typically take years to deliver. Efficiency, by contrast, can create impact today. 

This is why Africa's energy challenge should not be viewed through a supply lens alone. Bringing energy efficiency to the forefront of the conversation changes the equation. It recognises that progress is not determined purely by how much new energy we can generate, but also by how effectively we use what is already available.

On a continent where access remains one of the defining development challenges of our time, greater efficiency is one of the fastest ways to extend the reach and impact of existing energy resources while longer-term infrastructure investments take shape.

This shift is critical as Africa's digital economy expands. Historically, greater connectivity, data use and economic activity drove higher energy demand. The ICT sector is now showing that growth and energy consumption can be decoupled.

Advances in network design, energy management and operational efficiency are enabling organisations to support growing volumes of digital activity while using less energy. Vodacom's experience provides a practical example. By improving the efficiency of radios, modernising equipment, optimising cooling, deploying and introducing software-based energy-saving features and designing new sites for efficiency from the outset, the group is reducing the energy used to carry each unit of data traffic across the network. Smart monitoring further strengthens these efforts by identifying where energy is being consumed, flagging inefficient equipment and enabling real-time performance optimisation. These actions, together with designing new sites with energy efficiency in mind from the outset, have improved the group’s energy intensity to 0.27 megawatt-hours per terabyte of data carried across its network – a 20% improvement on the previous year.

Another important but often overlooked contributor to energy efficiency is spectrum availability. Access to larger and more affordable allocations of spectrum enables mobile operators to carry significantly more traffic and connect more customers without having to build proportionally more network sites. Greater spectrum abundance improves network capacity and coverage, allowing operators to serve growing demand more efficiently while reducing the energy required per unit of data carried. As governments across Africa consider how best to accelerate digital inclusion, spectrum policy should be recognised as an energy policy lever too. Making additional spectrum available in larger blocks and at affordable prices can help mobile network operators close the connectivity gap faster, reduce infrastructure costs and energy consumption, and maximise the social and economic value delivered by digital connectivity.

The implications extend far beyond telecommunications. Every gain in efficiency eases pressure on constrained electricity systems, reduces the new generation capacity required to support growth and helps make more power available to communities and other sectors of the economy.

The opportunity does not begin and end with telecommunications. One of the sector's most important lessons is that efficiency is no longer simply about using less energy. It is about using data, automation and real-time insight to manage energy more intelligently.

Technologies such as AI-enabled optimisation, smart energy management systems and remote monitoring tools can help organisations identify inefficiencies, reduce waste and improve performance. In telecommunications, AI-driven solutions can analyse network traffic in real-time and automatically adjust network operations to improve efficiency without compromising service quality. Across a typical network of 1 000 sites, these systems have been shown to save close to 1.5 million kWh of electricity a year.

The same digital capabilities that optimise energy use across networks can help organisations understand, manage and reduce energy consumption across a wide range of operational environments.

Despite its potential to reduce costs, lower emissions and ease pressure on constrained energy systems, energy efficiency remains underfunded. Considerable effort has gone into developing funding models for renewable energy projects, and similar innovation is needed to unlock investment in reducing demand.

Energy service companies (ESCOs), performance-based contracts, revolving credit facilities and dedicated energy-efficiency financing mechanisms can help overcome the upfront costs that often delay efficiency projects. One promising model is the energy performance contract, through which efficiency improvements are funded upfront and repaid from the savings they generate gradually. By making efficiency easier to finance, these mechanisms can accelerate the deployment of solutions that deliver immediate economic and environmental returns.

Unlocking finance is an important part of the equation, but funding alone will not guarantee better outcomes. The challenge is to translate investment into measurable efficiency gains at scale.

That requires more than technology. Organisations need the skills to deploy and manage new solutions, the technical expertise to integrate them into existing operations and the institutional capacity to move projects from strategy to implementation. Collaboration is equally important. Governments, industry, financiers and technology providers each have a role in sharing expertise, building capability and removing barriers to adoption.

When these enablers come together, efficiency can move beyond isolated projects to become a catalyst for broader economic and social progress.

As connectivity expands across the continent, energy demand will continue to rise, placing greater pressure on energy systems that are already struggling to keep pace. But Africa has a choice. We can continue to treat efficiency as a secondary consideration or recognise it as a strategic resource.

The objective cannot simply be to produce more energy. It must be to ensure that every kilowatt-hour delivers the greatest possible economic and social value. If we get that equation right, efficiency could become one of Africa's most powerful tools for expanding energy access and accelerating the transition to a lower-carbon future.