By KENNEDY MUPESENI –

THE African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has unveiled its landmark initiative to solve Africa’s huge energy deficit by 2025.
This was disclosed at a high-level stakeholder consultative meeting attended by business and political leaders at its headquarters in Abidjan on September 17, 2015.
The “New Deal for Energy in Africa,” which chats the way for a transformative partnership on energy, focuses on mobilising support and funding for the initiative from five key areas.
According to the statement, the AfDB would significantly expand its support towards energy in Africa, which would enable development partners obliged to scale up on-going efforts while countries must also expand their share of financing going into the energy sector and at the same time demonstrate stronger political will to ensure success of the deal.
The AfDB said development partners would also be required to work together and coordinate their efforts to drive critical policy and regulatory reforms of the energy sector to improve incentives for accelerated investments.
“A lot of financing will be needed, together we must close the US$55 billion financing gap for energy in sub-Saharan Africa. And we must raise our level of commitment to meet the US$22 billion needed to support universal access to energy in the region,” AfDB the statement
said.
In this ,domestic resource mobilisation would play a crucial role by leveraging on just 10 per cent  of the continent’s tax revenues estimated at US$ 500 billion per year; ending the over $60 billion annual illicit financial flows out of Africa can help.
The developed countries meeting the 0.7 per cent commitment for Gross National Income (GNI) for development assistance which can generate more than $178 billion can also help to scale up energy development in Africa.
“The New Energy Deal for Africa will push for the establishment of a Bottom-of the Pyramid Energy Financing Facility for Africa. This should support some 700 million people to afford clean cooking energy stoves.
The cost is well within our reach to provide, for it will take only $4.2 billion to solve the problem. We can and must solve their problem, and do so quickly,” the statement said.