The African Energy Forum (AEF), the continent’s longest-running investor gathering, founded in 1999, held its latest edition in Cape Town from June 16-19. The event was originally scheduled to be held in Dubai before it was moved due to conflict in the Middle East.
On the sidelines of the conference, Infiniti Power, a joint venture between the Emirati company Masdar and the Egyptian Infiniti Energy Group, announced three deals covering South Africa and Egypt. Its structure highlights the diversity of actors financing and building Africa’s energy future.
The issue of risk appetite
The continent needs an estimated $190 billion in annual energy investments between 2026 and 2030 to achieve its climate and energy goals, with two-thirds of it allocated to clean energy, according to the International Energy Agency. However, Africa has approximately 39% of the world’s renewable energy potential, while more than 600 million Africans still lack reliable access to electricity.
Lacking the resources and technical capacity to build this infrastructure alone, African governments are actively seeking financing and partners, at a time when traditional players such as France have reduced their presence in markets considered too risky, including Niger and Burkina Faso.
The Gulf countries see an opportunity in this vacuum to accelerate the process of diversifying their economies. The United Arab Emirates occupies a special position in this dynamic. They claim that $110 billion was invested across the continent between 2019 and 2023, of which $72 billion was in renewables, more than China, France and the UK combined.
However, this number is lower than the geography of those investments. Masdar is leading large-scale projects in relatively stable markets, such as the Noor Midelt solar park in Morocco. Vanes Group, another Emirati player in the sector, is undertaking projects where few Gulf investors would dare go: Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger, countries where political instability keeps Western capital away.
The Union 7 programme, launched in 2022 with the aim of providing clean electricity to 100 million Africans by 2035, reflects this appetite for risk, which sets the UAE apart not only from Western powers but from other Gulf donors as well.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are moving more cautiously, concentrating their investments in more established markets. ACWA Power is developing wind power along Egypt’s Red Sea coast, while Qatar Energy has stakes in Egyptian offshore gas blocks, two markets in which France remains entrenched. Across the continent, ACWA Power claims $7 billion has already been invested in African renewables, complemented by an additional $5 billion cooperation framework signed with the African Development Bank at the end of 2025.
For more risk-vulnerable countries, struggling to muster Western financing and ignored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is the UAE’s taste for risk that often opens the door to basic infrastructure financing. The difference between the three Gulf strategies does not lie in the generosity of deployed capital as much as it lies in the willingness to take political and economic risks.
Gulf capital, foreign hands
This diversity of profiles is evident in the details of the deals signed in mid-June in Cape Town. Infinity Power is run by an Emirati company, Masdar, and an Egyptian entity, but the implementation of its three announcements falls on other industrial powers. The Highveld Solar Project in South Africa has been awarded, through a conditional EPC contract, to Indian engineering group Sterling & Wilson.
Ngwedi Group, also based in South Africa, has been outsourced to PowerChina Guizhou, a Chinese state-owned enterprise. In Egypt, the Nafer Minya agreement covers the supply of units by the Chinese company AIKO Energy. Infiniti Power CEO Eng. Nair Fouad described the signings as enabling the company to “transform a strong development pipeline into projects ready for implementation.”
Egypt stands out in one structural point. Infiniti Power is itself a joint venture with Egyptian Infiniti Energy, giving Cairo a direct equity stake in the project rather than simply acting as host country, a model not replicated by South African projects: there, Infiniti Power acts as sole developer, working with foreign EPC contractors.
This distinction carries significant weight, given that energy security has been a national priority for Cairo since the 2024 power outage, caused by a decline in domestic gas production and over $1 billion in emergency LNG imports. The UAE has committed more than $60 billion to Egypt between 2020 and 2025, and Masdar is developing two other major projects there: a 5-gigawatt floating power plant on Lake Nasser and a 2.8-gigawatt plant in Nag Hammadi. It is this direct participation in capital, more than just the amount of money used, that distinguishes Egypt’s position from that of South Africa.
Two-way partnership?
This partnership appears to be beneficial to both sides. It supports African countries seeking financing and technical expertise to build energy infrastructure, while giving Gulf countries access to significant renewable potential in an increasingly competitive international market. For Abu Dhabi and other regional capitals, it also provides diplomatic leverage on a continent widely viewed as the world’s next frontier.
The more important question for Africa’s more fragile markets is whether the UAE model heralds a broader shift in risk appetite, including among Western investors, in the race for the continent’s energy potential, or whether persistent instability in some African countries will continue to exclude them from major capital flows. For Paris, London, and Washington, the UAE’s strategy may prove to be a model worth following rather than just a regional curiosity.