As the World Bank moves towards its twenty-second replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA22), energy has been placed firmly at the centre of the conversation, with campaigners stressing that it impacts development, it impacts climate, and it impacts human development, according to a video shared by World Bank Africa on X. The remarks, made by Karabo Mokgonyana of Power Shift Africa under the hashtag #IDAworks, speak directly to the situation facing countries such as Zimbabwe, where energy access remains both a driver of progress and a persistent constraint on growth.
Zimbabwe illustrates the stakes involved starkly. National electricity access stood at 62 percent as of the most recent figures, up sharply from just 49 percent in 2021, yet this national average masks a deep urban-rural divide: roughly 80 percent of urban residents have grid access, compared with only around 23 percent of those in rural areas. The country’s generation mix remains dominated by thermal power, contributing 41.8 percent of supply, followed by hydropower at 34.6 percent, with imports making up nearly a fifth of the total and independent power producers contributing a modest 3 percent.
For years, this imbalance between supply and demand has translated into chronic load shedding, disrupting households, industry and service delivery alike. However, Zimbabwe’s power utility, ZESA, has recently pointed to signs of progress, citing a run of over 130 consecutive days without load shedding and setting an ambitious target of ending outages entirely by December 2026, backed by improved regional power trading, operational restructuring and financing support including a facility from Afreximbank. The utility has also set its sights further out, targeting full national electrification by 2030 and an end to power imports by 2027, with major projects such as the long-anticipated Batoka Gorge Hydro Power Project, developed jointly with Zambia, seen as central to that ambition.
It is precisely this link between reliable energy and broader development outcomes that IDA22 discussions are seeking to address at a continental level. For countries like Zimbabwe, access to concessional financing through IDA has historically supported feasibility studies, grid strengthening and regional power pool integration, the kind of foundational work that underpins larger investments in generation capacity. As Mokgonyana’s comments suggest, the case being made to the Bank’s shareholders is that closing Africa’s energy gap is not simply an infrastructure question, but one that touches climate resilience, industrialisation and the everyday livelihoods of ordinary citizens, a reality Zimbabwean households living through years of load shedding know all too well.