LocationsREA-led, GEF-funded initiative backed by USD 13.45 million in national co-financing
Zambia Launches Africa Mini-Grids Programme to Power Rural Communities and Build a Lasting Energy Market
July 23, 2026
Government of Zambia, REA, and UNDP officials at the official launch of the Africa Mini-Grids Programme (AMP) Zambia, held in Lusaka on 23 July 2026.
Photo by: Vanessa Wematu Akibate/UNDP Zambia
Lusaka, 23rd July 2026 — The Government of the Republic of Zambia, through the Rural Electrification Authority (REA), together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), today officially launched the Africa Mini-Grids Programme (AMP) Zambia — a four-year initiative to accelerate access to clean, reliable electricity for rural communities by building a sustainable, investable mini-grid market.
Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by REA with support from UNDP, AMP Zambia is the national component of a programme operating across 21 African countries. The project will strengthen enabling regulations, de-risk private investment, and demonstrate business models that can be replicated at scale, with productive uses of energy and digitalisation embedded in its design from the outset.
Of the project's USD 15 million total financing, USD 13.45 million is grant co-financing from REA — nearly ten times the USD 1.36 million GEF grant administered by UNDP. The programme gives further expression to the Government's commitment to deliver 1,000 mini-grids and to achieve universal electricity access by 2030.
Speaking as guest of honour, Eng. Arnold Simwaba, Permanent Secretary for Electricity at the Ministry of Energy, affirmed the Government's commitment to an enabling environment for renewable energy investment. "Over the past few years, significant progress has been made in strengthening Zambia's legal and regulatory framework for off-grid electrification," he said. "We continue to promote investment certainty, and we remain committed to ensuring that rural communities benefit from modern, reliable and sustainable energy services."
Eng. Alex Mbumba, Chief Executive Officer of the Rural Electrification Authority, outlined the project's direct impact stating that: "through the Zambia Minigrids Project, 4,396 people are expected to benefit directly from improved access to clean, reliable and sustainable energy, through a demonstration project with mini-grids totalling 450kW."
UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Laurent Rudasingwa underscored the significance of Zambia's leadership of the initiative. "Although this is a regional programme, it is also a Zambian-led programme in the fullest sense," he said. "At a time when official development assistance is declining worldwide, the path forward will increasingly be charted by African countries mobilising their own resources and setting their own priorities, and Zambia is showing the way. This commitment is what it looks like when a country invests in its own transformation, using catalytic finance to unlock far more."
Mr. Rudasingwa also stressed that the programme's ambition reaches beyond infrastructure. "We will not measure success by the number of mini-grids alone," he said. "We will know we have succeeded when a private developer chooses to build in a Zambian village of their own initiative; when a mini-grid still hums ten years after commissioning because the tariff works, the technicians are local, and the demand is real; and when women are not only customers of energy, but owners of the enterprises it powers."
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For more information and media interviews, contact:
Jayne D. Mukumbwa, Manager - Corporate Affairs, jmukumbwa@rea.org.zm
Esther Nkomo, Programme Analyst, esther.nkomo@undp.org
Mercy Khozi, Communications Analyst, mercy.khozi@undp.org
