Given the many reactors peppered all over Africa, nuclear power is nothing new to the continent. Since the 1960s, the continuous operation of the handful of reactors has navigated through shifting geopolitical winds, civil wars, coups, technical ambitions, reactor accidents, and non-proliferation challenges. Perhaps most infamous among these is South Africa’s 20 MW SAFARI-1 materials-testing reactor, supplied by Atomics International in 1965. Safari-1 operated outside IAEA safeguards and is to this day suspected to have played a crucial role in the Vela incident of 1979 in which a flash of light was detected by the Vela satellite and was thought to be nuclear in origin.
Elsewhere, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with all the challenges it has endured, was home to a 100 kW TRIGA Mark II reactor, which served in training, isotope production, and research roles. Other research reactors are Ghana’s 30 kW Miniature Neutron Source Reactor from CNNC; Nigeria’s 30 kW NIRR-1 pool-type unit from China; Algeria’s Soviet-designed 1 MW NUR reactor; Egypt’s 2 MW ET-RR-1 from the Soviet Union and the 22 MW ET-RR-2 they got from Argentina.
At the moment, Africa’s only commercial nuclear power plant is located in South Africa at Koeberg, north of Cape Town, where two 900 MW PWRs from Siemens/KWU have endured Western embargoes and vendor dependencies until post-1994 democratic reforms that bolstered transparency at the National Nuclear Regulator. This will soon change as the four VVER-1200s are currently under construction at El Dabaa in Egypt. Their development will qualify Nuclear Renaissance 2.0 as a global phenomenon.
There are many other developments on the continent that justify such an outlook. Construction scheduling for Dual Fluid’s novel “Generation V” prototype that incorporates both a lead-cooled and molten salt loop in Kigali, Rwanda, has targeted an aggressive two-year window from groundbreaking to connection to the grid. Demonstration of operation at 50 MWe capacity, reactor transient behaviour under load shifts and emergency-core-cooling scenarios using simulation data are expected to unlock financing from institutions like the World Bank – one of the many risk-averse institutions that have recently lifted moratoriums on the funding of such projects. However, missing from the list of banks whose attitude towards nuclear has been shifted by the colossal energy demands of regenerative AI is the African Development Bank (AFDB).
The project proceeds amid accusations of Rwanda’s alleged involvement in some cross-border militarism that has destabilised the eastern swathes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The accompanying non-proliferation risks have thrown the role of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (AFCONE) into sharp relief.
Originally intended to enforce a nuclear weapons-free mandate in Africa, AFCONE now has a dedicated office of the Head of Civilian Applications of Nuclear Energy, marking a long-overdue institutional shift from the enforcement of the Treaty of Pelindaba. Policy workshops convened by AFCONE have addressed optimisation of IAEA General Safety Requirements to regional contexts, including grid-integration standards and workforce certification schemes.
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By GlobalDataAFCONE has so far enabled interregional mutual recognition of safety assessments in line with the IAEA’s milestone approach and is a source of a steady, albeit slow, supply of a truly pan-African technical workforce. Engagement with regional power pools like the recently launched one in East Africa has justified nuclear power projects in national grids that tend to be seen as overkill when restricted to local energy mixes only. The creation of the office also reflects Africa’s commitment to its decarbonisation and energy poverty mitigation targets detailed in the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
NuScale Power’s decision to deploy small modular reactors (SMRs) in Ghana is yet another example of what a stable, predictable political environment and commitment can do for private business. Plans for the deployment of its Voygr reactor modules continue, despite the cancellation of similar agreements in other mature jurisdictions, where revised Capex risks spooked investors. Counterarguments have focused on the benefits that localisation of some of Voygr’s supply chain will bring. Achieving the standard 20% local supply chain contribution by year five of operations will be challenging, as this requires rapid scaling of Ghana’s manufacturing capabilities and workforce competencies.
Considering how irregularities in South Africa’s effort to expand its nuclear fleet led to the cancellation of dozens of contracts, Koeberg’s successful replacement of a steam generator was the silver lining to a very dark cloud. The suspended contracts included some for reactor-design licensing support, concrete-containment construction, and nuclear-grade piping fabrication that roped in several private contractors which have since been blacklisted pending resolution of corruption charges. Projected impacts mean postponement of grid-connection dates by years and alarming cost escalations that now exceed 40% of the initial budgets. The strategic plan to achieve 9 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2030 has been recalibrated by a decade.
However, the situation gives AFCONE the perfect opportunity to strengthen its fledgling civilian-applications mandate. Once implemented in South Africa, the same measures can be proposed for adoption in the many newcomer states like Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Morocco. All these, though at various levels of planning and development of domestic nuclear power projects, are signatories of the commitment made at COP 28 in Abu Dhabi to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. Meanwhile, Algeria, Ethiopia, Niger, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia are all exploring nuclear power, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA).
The run-on effect of these newcomers’ nuclear ambitions has the private sector taking notice. Enlit Africa, one of the biggest conferences on the energy, food and water nexus, convened a panel of nuclear experts, signalling an awareness that nuclear power is no longer just a preserve of governments. Represented on this panel in Cape Town were regulatory bodies, academia and even private consultancies like Damona Nuclear Experts.
Green hydrogen strategies, the AI revolution as Silicon Valley behemoths try to secure power supply for their data centres, the potential of desalination of sea water and other applications, have all been noticed by local and international partners like the Nuclear Industrial Alliance of Turkey (NIATR).
These developments and more point to the mutually beneficial opportunities that will come as the world’s youngest and ever-growing population goes nuclear. All that remains are opportunities for collaboration with partners who share this common vision.
