7
UN Sustainable Development Goal
Energy access, affordability, reliability and clean energy systems.
StoneComms uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals as an editorial classification framework. Relevance does not imply UN affiliation, endorsement or measured impact.
← Browse all researchAfrica's battery-storage opportunity is becoming more concrete, but installed capacity is an incomplete measure of progress. South Africa's October procurement announcement prioritises storage services; Egypt's Obelisk solar-and-storage complex reached full commercial operation in August; Senegal's Walo project provides a distinct grid-support model. StoneComms examines the institutional machinery that converts stored electricity into reliable service: a defined system need, a suitable location, enforceable dispatch rights, durable payments and funded lifetime performance.
Read research →The Global Grids Accelerator and a new IEA technology assessment have placed electricity networks at the centre of the development agenda. For African utilities, however, the highest-value digital investment is rarely the most fashionable one. StoneComms examines how meters, asset records, telemetry, remote control, grid-enhancing technologies and carefully governed AI can reduce losses, improve reliability and make existing networks work harder—without pretending that software can replace new lines, substations or solvent utilities.
Read research →The Emergent Grid demonstration announced on 24 September 2026 asks an unusual infrastructure question. Could small, flexible computing loads buy electricity that African mini-grids are not yet selling, giving the power system steadier revenue while local demand grows? Initial sites in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone are projected to serve or strengthen service for approximately 85,000 people. The proposition is promising precisely because it is not yet proven. Its value will depend on whether compute is genuinely interruptible, whether savings reach communities, whether digital revenue is additional, and whether the equipment leaves behind stronger local infrastructure rather than a remote enclave.
Read research →UNICEF’s September 2026 invitation to 96 prequalified companies creates a rare chance to procure connectivity services for schools and health facilities across all 54 African countries. The scale is arresting: a potential universe of more than 860,000 schools and 260,000 health facilities. The harder question is institutional. Can a contract for internet access become a durable education service—powered, maintained, used by teachers, safe for children and accountable to the public?
Read research →Africa is joining national grids into regional power systems. The next test is whether electricity can move through them reliably, be paid for, and reach the people and firms whose demand justified the investment. StoneComms examines the missing span between an interconnector's completion and a functioning market.
Read research →Africa’s clean-cooking push is finally attracting serious money and delivering record gains. It is also concentrating risk. Liquefied petroleum gas now provides more than 70 per cent of the continent’s clean-cooking access, captured nearly half of recent summit disbursements, and remains exposed to imported-fuel prices and maritime chokepoints. The answer is not to retreat from LPG. It is to judge every clean-cooking pathway by whether households can keep using it when prices, suppliers or projects fail.
Read research →Mission 300 is accelerating electricity connections across Africa. The next challenge is making those connections economically durable. StoneComms finds that farms, small businesses, clinics, schools, cold chains and mobility can do more than benefit from electricity: they can become the anchor loads that improve the economics of distributed power itself.
Read research →Kenya has entered a rare policy window: electric mobility is scaling quickly, battery swapping is becoming infrastructure rather than a product feature, and the legal framework is still being written. The strategic question is not whether one battery should win. It is which interfaces must be shared before proprietary networks become expensive to unwind.
Read research →