The first like-for-like financial benchmark of Africa's power-sector companies. It reads more than two dozen entities across a dozen markets onto a common, dollar-translated basis, sorting generators, distributors, grid operators, integrated utilities and developers into cohorts and scoring each against its peers on profitability, cash and leverage.

For an investor or lender weighing exposure to African power, a single utility's audited accounts say little without a peer to read them against. This benchmark supplies that peer set. Its inaugural edition reads twenty-five power-sector entities across twelve markets onto a common, dollar-translated basis for FY2021 to FY2025, sorts them into five cohorts, generation, distribution, transmission, integrated utilities and developers, and scores each against its cohort peers through three lenses: monetisation, cash and capital. Together the entities turned over roughly 28 billion dollars in FY2024 and carry about 65 billion dollars of liabilities, so the balance sheet, not the income statement, is where the sector's weight sits.

Capital structure does the cohort's sorting

Leverage is the widest spread in the benchmark. Net debt to EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) runs from net cash at the strongest names to nearly twenty-eight times at the heaviest, with Zambia's ZESCO (Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation) around twenty times and Eskom near eight. Where debt sits at the heavy end, operating reform alone rarely moves an entity up its cohort inside a five-year window, and the realistic route is a balance-sheet event. Two recent precedents show the scale required: Eskom's 254 billion rand debt-relief package, and Ghana's 1.47 billion dollar clearance of energy-sector arrears, which by the end of 2025 had settled its gas suppliers, its independent power producers (IPPs) and the World Bank guarantee in full.

The ceiling on returns is the offtaker's ability to pay

Across every cohort the numbers point back to demand. Generators hold operating availability above 90 percent yet dispatch only a fraction of it, the Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGCL) at 34 percent, KenGen at 54 and Transcorp at 56, because the grid is not buying. Distributors collect between 67 and 92 percent of what they bill, and days receivable stretch from 88 at Umeme to 276 at the Yola Electricity Distribution Company (YEDC). The most creditworthy new demand is migrating toward data centres, mineral processors and export-exposed industry, and that is increasingly where developers aim the next megawatt.

Profitability is largely a property of the cohort

Margins cluster by cohort. Transmission and generation run structurally high margins, distribution structurally thin ones, so we grade each entity against its own cohort rather than against the field. A strong mark means an entity is outperforming its direct peers, and it tells you little until you know which cohort it sits in.

Currency can move an entity's standing on its own

Reported in dollars, an entity's position can shift on the exchange rate alone. The naira's slide from about 470 to 1,500 per dollar compressed Nigeria's distributors, while the cedi's recovery loosened the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Volta River Authority (VRA). Seven of fifteen local-currency reporters changed cohort position on translation alone between FY2023 and FY2024, which means a currency-stabilisation programme can move an entity without any operating change at all.

The same names lead and lag across the operating measures

A consistent group sits at the top of its cohort on the operating measures, among them TAQA Morocco, Kenya Power, the Electricity Company of Ghana, Umeme and the Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC). Eskom, ZESCO and several Nigerian distributors sit at the floor. The middle of every cohort holds entities one tariff cycle, one balance-sheet event or one operating reform away from moving up or down.

What this benchmark is for

We built it for the investors, lenders, development finance institutions (DFIs) and boards that need to compare these companies on a like-for-like basis. It does not rank the cohorts against one another, and it issues no recommendations. It shows where each entity stands among its peers and what would move it. Edition 2027 widens the cohort and tracks which of those moves actually land.

Africa Power Financial Benchmark 2026

Read the full report with Enterprise access