New report explores the role of grid innovation in driving Africa’s energy transformation
The economic output of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double by 2040, yet energy shortages remain a critical barrier to unlocking this potential. Ageing infrastructure, high transmission and distribution losses, and frequent outages continue to undermine grid and mini-grid systems, impacting healthcare, education, agriculture, and local enterprise. With more than 600 million people across the continent still lacking access to reliable electricity, businesses and households are often forced to rely on expensive diesel generators, raising costs and emissions across the region.
Energy Catalyst’s latest report ‘Inclusive innovation: building resilient grid systems across sub-Saharan Africa’, maps out how innovators are responding with cutting-edge technologies and business models designed to strengthen grid reliability, efficiency and resilience across diverse contexts. Published in late November 2025, and authored by Energy 4 Impact in collaboration with the Carbon Trust, it has a clear overarching message: resilience is not the result of a single intervention or technology, but the outcome of systems that can respond intelligently to live data, work in tandem, and evolve over time.
Five trends reshaping grid performance
The report spotlights five innovation trends, each illustrated by an Energy Catalyst-supported company, that are fundamentally reshaping how grid performance is approached:
- Energy storage for stability and resilience: AceOn is deploying modular, portable second-life battery systems that provide flexible backup capacity and continuity of supply in weak-grid environments at a far lower cost than diesel alternatives.
- Data-driven grid analytics and load management: OrxaGrid’s system uses IoT sensors and cloud analytics to extend visibility to rural assets, enabling predictive maintenance, faster fault response, and substantial loss reduction, a necessity when systems often lack real-time network visibility.
- Integration-ready decentralised systems: Nanoé has developed nano-grids designed to scale into mesh-grids and eventually integrate with national networks, offering a progressive pathway to higher tiers of service in areas where grid expansion is slow or financially constrained.
- Intelligent demand-side management: Gridimp’s innovation automates control across batteries, appliances and electric vehicles to cut peak demand and reduce outage risk, demonstrating how demand-side flexibility can stabilise stressed systems like those experiencing chronic load-shedding in South Africa.
- Energy sharing and trading platforms: Ubuntu Energy facilitates community-level energy trading to match surplus solar generation with local demand, addressing the persistent energy paradox where underutilised solar generation exists alongside neighbouring sites relying on diesel.
Crucially, as the report outlines, these trends reinforce one another. Storage delivers more value when it is informed by accurate data; decentralised architectures become more robust when demand is actively managed; and trading platforms depend on visibility, standards and interoperable architectures. In sub-Saharan Africa, some of the greatest gains and most meaningful improvements may stem from developing coherent, unified architectures.
The three pillars of coherent energy architecture
These themes were explored in greater depth at the report launch webinar, moderated by Mercy Rose (Head of Energy Research and Innovation, Energy 4 Impact), and facilitated by Masao Ashtine (Senior Manager, Energy Transition, Carbon Trust). Speakers from AceOn Group, OrxaGrid, Nanoé, Gridimp and Ubuntu Energy shared insights from their deployments, before joining a panel focused on how solutions combine within more integrated energy architectures. This architecture-driven framing was translated into three cross-cutting themes: modularity, interoperability and convergence.
Mark Thompson from AceOn defined modularity as an operational capability, commenting: "For me, modularity is not simply about small boxes that you can stack together. In practice, it fundamentally changes how systems are deployed, scaled, serviced, and integrated.” This means building core systems that are repeatable and adaptable across contexts: "a kind of universal energy Lego”. Lucas Richards of Nanoé highlighted that modularity builds resilience by enabling fault isolation: if one component fails due to a climatic shock, the rest of the system continues to operate, avoiding "single points of failure".
Interoperability, according to Masao Ashtine, allows us to avoid the fragmentation inherent in “multiple disconnected platforms” giving the example of needing “sixteen different apps for sixteen different pieces of equipment.” Akshat Kulkarni of OrxaGrid emphasised that innovation should not supersede continuity, explaining that while new systems may use efficient, lightweight IoT protocols, they must also support established industrial protocols. This commitment ensures that infrastructure built decades ago can continue to be used, reducing the need for costly overhauls.
Convergence was defined as bringing fragmented approaches into a more holistic, system-wide pathway. This move is essential for moving past solutions being "locked in proprietary islands”, as Masao Ashtine put it. Looking ahead to 2030, Mark Thompson predicted that the integration layer will not be a "complex, hardware-heavy wrapper" but a "hardware-agnostic control and optimisation layer".
Resilience means opportunity
Ultimately, the report emphasises how reliability improvements will translate into tangible social and economic outcomes. More resilient systems enable energy-intensive productive uses, support cold chains for agriculture, and keep critical public services, such as clinics and schools, powered consistently.
To realise these benefits, action is required beyond driving technological progress. The report calls for supportive regulation to formalise pathways for second-life batteries, peer-to-peer trading, and mesh-grid development. Furthermore, blended finance and results-based approaches are necessary to de-risk investment in energy provision in underserved areas and ensure that innovations can transition from pilot projects to scalable ventures.
Read the report here.
Watch the webinar recording here.