Wind has never been the thing Africa's windiest countries were short of. Algeria, Libya and Sudan have some of the largest wind resources on the continent, and together they have built less than 200 megawatts of turbines. South Africa has about 4.2 gigawatts, more than any other African country.
The Global Wind Energy Council put a number on that gap in The Status of Wind in Africa, a report launched in Cape Town on 7 October. It reckons the continent has about 58,400 gigawatts of wind that could technically be harnessed on land, and that less than 0.02% of it has been built. Everything Africa had installed by the end of 2025 came to 11.1 gigawatts, a new high for the continent and still a rounding error against what is available.
The report's argument is that wind farms do not go where the wind is. "The constraint has never been the wind resource," it says. "It has been the set of institutions, contracts, grids and capital flows that turn wind into electricity and electricity into industry, jobs, and household power." Put plainly, somebody has to sign up to buy the power, a grid has to carry it, and a lender has to fund the turbines before anything gets built.
When the customer is a smelter
In South Africa, the customer has changed. For most of the industry's life here, the state did the buying through its own procurement. Regulatory reforms now let companies contract for wind power directly, and in less than 30 months that has unlocked more than 3.3 gigawatts. The buyers are mines, smelters and cement producers looking to wind to meet their electricity needs. Business Day, reading the full report, says those corporate buyers signed wind contracts at a faster rate in 30 months than the state procured in 15 years.
The money has gone local as well. South African banks and pension funds now finance most new wind farms here in rand, among them Standard Bank, Absa and the Public Investment Corporation. That takes a cost out of the price: borrowing in foreign currency carries the risk of not finding the dollars to repay, and that risk has historically been built into what African wind power charges.
Fifteen gigawatts by 2035
Juliana Kainga, who heads the council's Africa wind work, says the continent's wind story "is no longer a story of potential. It is becoming a story of execution." The council expects Africa to reach 30 to 50 gigawatts by 2035, with South Africa alone above 15.
Its conditions for getting there read like a list of what has held the continent back: ministries publishing auction calendars further ahead, utilities honouring the contracts they sign, and power lines built before the wind farms that need them. The fourth item, banks lending more in local currency, is the one South Africa has already started on.
