Africa’s Nuclear Energy Aims Test Financing Barrier

Source : Energy Intelligence: Africa’s Nuclear Energy Aims Test Financing Barrier https://www.energyintel.com/0000019a-79ce-d4bd-adbe-7bce74580000

by Jessica Sondgeroth • 14 November 2025

The Issue

Financing remains a potentially insurmountable issue for the build-out of nuclear power in Africa, but that isn’t stopping a growing number of African countries from engaging with vendor nations and touting ambitious deployment goals. While Egypt constructs its first nuclear power plant and South Africa attempts to breathe new life into its existing nuclear power program, multiple pathways to nuclear reactor deployment are being chartered across the continent. Ghana and Kenya have done the most legwork to be the next nuclear energy-producing countries in Africa, with Rwanda recently hitting the accelerator to join the race while Nigeria reorganizes its program and pursues US cooperation.

Africa’s Tentative Embrace of Nuclear

Ghana and Kenya, followed by Nigeria and Rwanda, are leading the pack of newcomer nuclear power countries in Africa, potentially following Egypt’s effort to bring on line by 2028 its first nuclear power plant, on which nuclear construction began in July 2022. South Africa, for decades the continent’s only nuclear power, has operated two large reactors since the 1980s and is now planning for another 10 gigawatts of nuclear capacity.

Africa’s prospective nuclear entrants are not poised to pour the concrete basemat for their first nuclear power plant anytime soon, however. “None of the African countries today is ready financially to go immediately in implementing the nuclear power plant,” Lassina Zerbo, chair of the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board, told Energy Intelligence at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris last week.

In its reference scenario, the World Nuclear Association’s recently released 2025 World Nuclear Fuel Report forecasts that Ghana and Nigeria will each have 1 GW in operation by 2038, while Kenya will have one small modular reactor (SMR) by 2040. That’s in line with projections from the World Energy Outlook released this week by the International Energy Agency: “Meeting rising electricity demand requires a major expansion of power systems in Africa,” read the most widely watched energy outlook in the world, and nuclear power development “gains momentum” in the report’s Stated Policies Scenario, which sees nuclear generation in the continent grow from 9 terawatt hours in 2024 to 48 TWh by 2035 and 78 TWh by 2050.

While 22 African countries are currently exploring launching civil nuclear programs, only Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria have “made the decision to embark on such a programme or are actively preparing for it,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) noted in a recent nuclear energy outlook for Africa. The Vienna-based agency envisions nuclear contributing only 1.4%–3.3% of Africa’s total electricity production, “compared with the current world average of 9.2%” by 2030, "with projections of 2–4.1% by 2050. “

Locking In Bilateral Support

Egypt is the only African country to have successfully launched a major nuclear program in decades and has four Russian-supplied VVER-1200 reactors under construction at the El-Dabaa plant on its Mediterranean coast. That deal hinged on Cairo’s bilateral relationship with Moscow: Egypt is financing the vast majority of its first civil nuclear project via a government-to-government loan from Russia, in which the Egyptian state — rather than the state-owned El-Dabaa project company — is ultimately on the hook to repay the loan.

That’s a more direct version of the sovereign guarantee typically required of recipient nations for loans from export credit agencies in OECD countries. For example, the underpinnings of any US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) financing for Poland’s inaugural nuclear plant of three AP1000s is a sovereign guarantee from Warsaw for loan repayment. Just as Moscow must satisfy itself as to the robustness of Cairo’s backstop of the El-Dabaa intergovernmental loan, Washington must satisfy itself as to the robustness of Warsaw’s sovereign guarantee for the Polish nuclear project.

It remains to be seen whether any of the African entrants can offer a sovereign guarantee — and convince the vendor state government that such a guarantee is sufficiently reliable — or secure a more creative agreement. Ghana is currently engaged with China on contract and financing frameworks and is pushing to restrict Ghanaian subsidies to a government-backed power purchase agreement (PPA) guaranteeing revenue certainty for a Chinese-supplied and -owned reactor.

Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria are in Phase 2 of the IAEA’s milestone program, involving preparatory work for contracting and constructing a nuclear power plant. This means all three countries have “conducted their pre-feasibility studies” and “made a firm decision to use nuclear technology for electricity production,” the IAEA said in the Africa outlook. For comparison, Egypt is in Phase 3 under the program’s schematics.

In any deals with OECD nations like the US, OECD rules dictate that export credit agencies can finance up to 85% of the project contract value. “The issue is that you start paying back the loan on commercial operation date, and it’s typically for about 18 years over the life of the plant of 60 years and beyond,” Loyiso Tyabashe, CEO of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, told Energy Intelligence in Paris.

The World Bank decision to lift a ban on nuclear financing may come into play but likely not for some time. “There’s a lot of preparation work to be done” in the nuclear sector “before the actual borrowing,” World Bank Senior Energy Specialist Lauren Culver told a Nov. 13 OECD webinar on nuclear financing. “This is where typically we would try and mobilize grant resources” to support “capacity building, project preparation and many of those different types of activities.” Culver outlined the fundamental challenge for the African countries hoping to launch nuclear programs: “Access to capital can be limited in a lot of low- and middle-income countries, and the cost of capital can be quite high.”

Varied Approaches

Front-runner civil nuclear aspirants Ghana and Kenya are moving in markedly different directions.

Ghana is, by some metrics, “poised — technologically and operationally — to be the first nuclear state” on the continent after South Africa and Egypt, a former US government official told Energy Intelligence. But Ghana also lacks the financial resources to fully support a newbuild project without substantial support from the vendor nation. State-owned developer Nuclear Power Ghana (NPG) is targeting operations of an SMR and a large light-water reactor around 2034, and for now, its focus is on NuScale’s SMR and China National Nuclear Corp.’s (CNNC) HPR1000. NPG has separately teamed up with Regnum Technology, a US developer that has been working with Accra for some years now, to deploy a NuScale SMR. Once Regnum has secured sufficient financing, NPG and Regnum would form a special purpose vehicle “to manage and implement the project,” with “industry as offtakers,” NPG Executive Director Stephen Yamoah told Energy Intelligence.

It’s not clear what US government financing — from US Ex-Im Bank, for instance — might be on offer. In Ghana’s talks with China for an HPR1000, meanwhile, NPG is hoping to secure a time-limited build-own-operate-transfer model: Under this proposal, Ghana would backstop the price of the output under a time-limited PPA and would purchase ownership of the plant once the PPA term ends. CNNC, meanwhile, wants NPG to take an equity stake in plant during the construction and early operation, until buying out the Chinese side eventually.

While Ghana is in staged talks with Western and Chinese partners in a race for first-mover status, Kenya is only now engaging with vendors while trying to build public trust before making a technology selection in early 2026. “We are in the process of engaging“with vendors”and receiving responses, ” Nuclear Power and Energy Agency CEO Justus Wabuyabo told the OECD webinar. “We’ve had a little bit of issues with public acceptance, but Kenya is implementing a very comprehensive public awareness engagement campaign.”

Oil-rich Nigeria, meanwhile, has the financial resources to support nuclear newbuild, “but Nigeria is missing all of the infrastructure that Ghana has, and a single approach,” an industry consultant told Energy Intelligence. Nigeria’s government struggles with public trust but is flush with private capital and a rapidly growing industrial base, and therefore may be a country in which private industry plays a major role in any prospective build-out of nuclear power. “We are still working on the financing model,” Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission head Anthony Ekedegwa told Energy Intelligence.”We’ve not concluded on any particular one yet, but we are looking at all the options and whichever will be most favorable to us.“In the meantime, one Rwandan official has suggested that Rwanda could leverage its natural resources to finance its first nuclear power project. Zerbo referenced the Central African Republic’s 2023 passage of a law permitting the”tokenization“of natural resources in blockchain for use as currency, although the country had at that point already adopted a national cryptocurrency. “Financing has been an issue,” and tokenization”can be appealing“because”if you can do that with your reserve and critical minerals that are certified, why not?" Zerbo noted, saying it’s a concept that may help bridge the gap until World Bank financing is available.

The Reactor Sales Competition

Early engagement from vendor nations will likely lay the groundwork for future supply deals.

“America’s pulled back from Africa, and China and Russia have filled that gap,” US Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the IAEA conference. “I think there’s a growing sentiment and particularly among me in our department, but plenty of others in our administration, that we have to reverse that trend.”

While Rwanda is already in advanced talks with Russia’s Rosatom for deployment of an SMR by 2030, Rwandan Prime Minister Justin Nsengiyumva met with US Energy Secretary Wright on Oct. 29 “to strengthen cooperation in energy innovation — including SMR nuclear power, natural gas and critical mineral processing,” Nsengiyumva’s office said in a LinkedIn post.

Nigeria is meanwhile requesting US engagement. During the IAEA side event in September— hosted by the US delegation — Ekedegwa was keen to note the lack of engagement from the Americans in Nigeria and told Energy Intelligence afterward: “We appreciate the fact that our sister countries are enjoying” civil nuclear energy cooperation with the US, but in Nigeria, the US government “should show interest. I believe we are a big market, and I believe we can offer them value for their money when the time comes,” he said, adding that the “Russians are offering something, the Chinese are also offering something.”

Indeed, Russia continues to make headway across the region. Beyond advanced talks with Rwanda, Russia has entered into nuclear cooperation agreements with Algeria, Burundi, the Congo Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Namibia, Nigeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the 2024 World Nuclear Industry Status Report. China, for its part, has nuclear cooperation agreements with Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, in addition to Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda.

South Korea has also been engaged in the region. Most recently, Kenya and South Korea on Sep. 15 signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen technical cooperation in nuclear energy.

At present, Washington only has one active nuclear cooperation agreement, also known as a “123 Agreement,” in Africa. That’s with Morocco, after agreements with both Egypt and South Africa expired in recent years. Meanwhile, the US is in talks for a 123 Agreement with Ghana and is set to begin similar talks with Kenya.

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