Africa’s Power Problem Is The Whole World’s Misfortune Too

BusinessEnergyAfrica’s Power Problem Is The Whole World’s Misfortune TooByKen Silverstein,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Ken Silverstein analyzes the Energy Transition, AI and GeopoliticsFollow AuthorApr 26, 2026, 09:00am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY MARIANNE BARRIAUX Vendors sell meat at the Oshodi night market in Lagos, late on June 6, 2015, lighting their stall with a fuel lamp in absence of electricity. AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesThe lights in Lagos, Nigeria, go out between 30 and 60 times a month. When power does flow, it lasts perhaps six to eight hours a day—enough to charge a phone, but not nearly enough to run a factory. It is the same story in Nairobi, Lusaka, and Dakar— cities that are technically electrified.At a moment when artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and the clean-energy transition are rewriting the global economic order, Africa’s commercial hubs risk getting left behind again—not because they lack wires, but because the electrons flowing through those networks are unreliable, untracked, and leaking.That is the argument Bim Adisa has been making to utilities, investors, and anyone who will listen. Adisa is the founder and CEO of Beacon Power Services, a Nigerian-based firm that builds data and software solutions for African power grids. His pitch is equal parts engineering lecture and economic manifesto: the path to a more stable, prosperous world runs through the transformer stations of sub-Saharan Africa, and the technology to fix them already exists.“No economy grows without electricity. It’s fundamental to industrialization, and in the 21st century, to digitization. Africa missed the last industrial revolution. Now we’re having another one, underpinned by electricity. It’...