Report Finds Critical Gap in Nigeria’s $500bn Additional Investment Target, 277Gw Installed Power Capacity by 2060

Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja 

A new national research report just published by Energy Transition Africa (ETA) has raised questions about the workforce and institutions needed to deliver Nigeria’s $500 billion energy transition ambition, as electricity investment expands and states assume greater regulatory powers.

Nigeria mapped out an energy future requiring approximately $500 billion in additional investment, 277 gigawatts (gw) of installed power capacity by 2060 and 840,000 new jobs by 2050. 

The investment, capacity and employment projections come from Nigeria’s updated Energy Transition and Investment Plan, published in November 2024. 

The targets represent modelled ambitions, not investments already secured or jobs already created. 

But the new report identified a critical gap between the targets and the evidence needed to determine whether or not the country has the people and institutions to deliver them.

The report, ‘Can Nigeria Deliver Its Energy Transition Plan? Nigeria Energy Transition Capability Baseline 2026,’ found that the country cannot yet demonstrate from publicly available evidence whether its workforce and institutional capabilities are sufficient to deliver the scale and pace of its planned energy transformation.

“Nigeria has engineers, technicians, financiers, training institutions and electricity regulators already performing important functions. What remains missing from the public record is a consolidated national assessment showing how many professionals the transition requires, which occupations are needed, where they must be deployed and whether existing systems can supply them.

“The findings raise questions for a country seeking to mobilise unprecedented energy investment, expand electricity access, develop new industries and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the report said.

Executive Director of Energy Transition Africa and Research Lead, Vincent Egoro, said: “Nigeria has a plan for the megawatts and a projection for the jobs. But where is the workforce plan connecting the two?

“We are not saying Nigeria lacks engineers, technicians or capable institutions. We are asking a more consequential question: do we know whether we have enough of them, in the right places, at the right time, to deliver what the country is planning?”

One of the report’s most revealing findings concerns the workforce required to operate and maintain mini-grids.

Nigeria is investing in decentralised electricity systems to bring power to underserved communities. 

Yet, ETA said it found that widely cited employment figures cannot reliably establish how many people are needed to operate and maintain these installations over time.

The research tested whether available public data could support a defensible staffing estimate for a defined mini-grid operations function. 

It could not, the report said, adding that existing employment measures combine construction, operations and central support jobs, making them unsuitable for estimating the personnel required for particular operating functions.

“A mini-grid can be commissioned, photographed and counted. But who maintains it five years later?

“How many technicians will be needed? Where will they come from? Who is measuring that demand before the infrastructure is installed? 

“These are practical questions that determine whether electricity investments continue delivering value long after commissioning.” Egoro said.

However, the findings did not establish that mini-grid operators lack maintenance personnel. It exposed a gap in the public workforce information needed to plan for long-term operations.

The research also raised questions about the rapid decentralisation of electricity regulation. 

Following the Electricity Act 2023, states have begun assuming responsibilities previously concentrated at the federal level. By July 2026, 16 states had completed the regulatory transition.

The report noted that these institutions must now perform specialist functions involving tariff determination, licensing, consumer protection, technical oversight and electricity-market regulation.

But ETA found that comparable public evidence about their specialist staffing, workloads, retention and institutional performance remains insufficient to assess whether regulatory capacity is keeping pace with expanding responsibilities.

According to the report, the concern is not whether state electricity regulators exist, but it is whether their ability to carry out increasingly complex responsibilities can be independently assessed.

“For investors, electricity companies and consumers, the distinction matters. Regulatory institutions play a central role in determining how electricity markets function and whether investments can operate within predictable rules,” it stressed.

ETA examined 16 major energy-transition requirements across six capability families, producing 96 evidence-assessment cells.

“Not one could be classified as fully measured against the report’s capability-adequacy standard.

“The finding does not mean Nigeria failed 96 tests or lacks the capabilities required for its transition. It means the available public evidence does not yet permit a complete assessment of whether those capabilities are sufficient,” the ETA report said, while  identifying functioning Nigerian institutions, technical training systems, certification arrangements, regulatory mechanisms and workforce information systems.

It also traced the country’s history of electricity-sector manpower studies to the 1960s and identified existing domestic approaches that could help establish a more reliable national picture.

“The central problem is not simply the absence of institutions or training programmes. It is the lack of a demonstrated connection between energy investment requirements, workforce demand, existing capabilities and deployment timelines,” it explained.

ETA therefore called for a coordinated national assessment of workforce and institutional capability, beginning with the power sector.

The proposed approach, it said, would connect existing government, industry, training, regulatory and labour-market information to actual energy-project requirements, stressing that it would establish which occupations are needed, in what numbers, where and when, while identifying where shortages, deployment gaps or institutional constraints require intervention.

Rather than recommending another government agency or a blanket national training target, the report argued for making better use of information and institutions Nigeria already possesses.

“The question is no longer simply how many people we can train. It is how many people the transition needs, what they must be able to do, where they must work and whether our institutions can sustain that capability over time,” Egoro said.