CEPA at the Africa Energy Indaba in Cape Town

At the beginning of March, the CEPA Team joined African and international partners in a Deep Dive session on strengthening Africa’s pipeline of bankable power infrastructure projects, organised during the Africa Energy Indaba in Cape Town. Hosted by AUDA-NEPAD and organised together with the African Union Commission (AUC) and Team Europe partner projects, the session focused on how to move priority energy infrastructure from planning to implementation. 

In her opening remarks, Sara Buzzoni of the EU Delegation to the African Union reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to enhancing access to electricity, strengthening interconnectivity between regions, and supporting greater public and private sector investment across the continent. This message also reflects the broader context in which CEPA operates: as the next step in more than two decades of AU–EU energy cooperation supporting Africa’s continental energy priorities.

CEPA presented its ongoing support to the African Single Electricity Market (AfSEM) and the Continental Power Systems Masterplan (CMP), with a particular focus on pre-feasibility studies for priority interconnectors. Two completed studies for the Burundi–Tanzania and Angola–DRC interconnectors were showcased as concrete examples of how early-stage project preparation can help reduce risk, attract follow-up support and build a stronger pipeline of investment-ready projects across the continent.
The session also highlighted a wider message: turning Africa’s infrastructure pipeline into operating power systems will require faster project preparation, stronger regional coordination and structures that can attract private capital at scale. With contributions from African power pools across the continent, the discussion underlined that regional interconnections are not only technical assets, but essential building blocks for a more integrated, resilient and future-oriented African electricity market.

The discussion reaffirmed that delivering on the AfSEM and CMP is not only about identifying projects, but about creating the conditions for implementation: stronger cooperation, more mature project pipelines and investment frameworks that can accelerate delivery. Ultimately, this work supports AfSEM’s long-term vision of creating the world’s largest single, unified electricity market by 2040, serving 1.3 billion people across all 55 African Union Member States.

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