Fossil fuels still dominate Africa's electricity mix. Gas, coal, and oil combined generated 703.2 TWh in 2025, versus 282.8 TWh from non-fossil sources — a gap 2.5 times as large.
That gap isn't fixed, though: it has actually narrowed over time, from 3.7 times in 1985 to a peak of 4.5 times in 2007, down to today's 2.5 times.
The geography behind the shift is uneven. South Africa alone accounts for all of Africa's 10.7 TWh of nuclear generation; together with Egypt, it accounts for 59% of the continent's 83.4 TWh of non-hydro renewables.
But hydropower — at 188.6 TWh, the largest single component of Africa's non-fossil mix — is generated almost entirely elsewhere: 172 TWh. or 91%, comes from outside those two countries, concentrated in Eastern , Middle, and Western Africa.
Gas remains the largest single source by a wide margin, at 403.9 TWh, but its growth has slowed to 0.8% in 2025 against 1.2–1.8% in each of the prior three years, while non-fossil generation grew 11.9% in the same year. Neither trend is guaranteed to hold, and a single year's growth rate isn't a forecast — but at current trajectories, non-fossil's 121.1 TWh gap behind gas is worth watching, not assuming fixed.
