Africa’s gas ambitions are confronting a difficult reality in 2026: the clean-energy shift is no longer theoretical. It is accelerating—technologically, economically, and politically—faster than many LNG-driven development plans anticipated.
For much of the past decade, producers in Nigeria, Mozambique, Senegal, and Mauritania built national strategies around expectations of rising global gas demand and long-term premium contracts. That assumption is weakening.
Costs are diverging sharply. Gas turbines have tripled in price since 2021, while battery storage costs fell by about 40% in 2024. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie project that by 2030, renewables paired with storage could be up to 56% cheaper than gas-fired generation—a margin that cash-strained African governments cannot ignore.
Global demand signals are shifting too. China—the world’s largest LNG importer—has scaled up wind, solar, and hydro investments, driving an 11-month decline in LNG imports. Major turbine manufacturers such as GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries warn of delivery delays stretching up to eight years, reducing gas’s ability to compete as a rapid coal-replacement option in Asia.
Still, Africa’s position is more complex than a renewables-versus-gas standoff. The African Energy Chamber forecasts that sub-Saharan LNG supply could quadruple by 2050, with gas-to-power demand growing more than fourfold as industrialisation deepens. Large infrastructure commitments—including the multibillion-dollar Nigeria–Morocco gas corridor and Ethiopia’s new gas-by-rail initiative—show that gas remains central to long-term planning.
South Africa illustrates the paradox. After achieving 266 days of uninterrupted power, the country is moving ahead with a $3 billion LNG import terminal in Durban while simultaneously scaling up grid-level battery storage. Gas and renewables are being forced into parallel roles, not opposing ones.
For Africa’s LNG exporters, the biggest risk lies in late, high-cost projects. If global supply surges just as European demand softens under its own clean-energy targets, frontier gas developments may become commercially vulnerable. As NJ Ayuk notes, exports alone cannot anchor Africa’s energy future.
Africa must continue leveraging its resources, but the era when gas was the continent’s uncontested growth engine is coming to an end.
