2026: How will Côte d'Ivoire's energy boom serve its industry?

With 2,907 MW of installed capacity and an electrification rate approaching 80%, Côte d'Ivoire possesses structural advantages few neighbours can claim: a modernised thermal fleet, a utility-scale solar programme achieving historic tariffs, and a nodal position within the West African Power Pool. The adoption in December 2025 of the Integrated Mineral Resources and Energy Policy (PIRME), mobilising USD 68 billion over fifteen years, consecrates this ambition.

The thermal fleet's anchor is the Baleine field, discovered by Eni in 2021 and developed at unprecedented pace. Phases 1 and 2, the latter commissioned on 28 December 2024, jointly deliver 60,000 barrels of oil and 70 million cubic feet of gas daily. The entirety of the associated gas feeds the Abidjan and Jacqueville thermal plants, securing feedstock for the coming decade.

The renewable buildout proceeds in parallel. The World Bank's Scaling Solar programme yielded in August 2025 a remarkable precedent: the award of the Touba and Laboa plants to Infinity Power at tariffs of EUR 0.032 and 0.033 per kWh, levels unprecedented in West and Central Africa. The Kong Solaire project, a 50 MW facility developed by InfraCo Africa and Africavia under a BOOT structure, broke ground in late 2025 and will power some 240,000 people upon completion. 

Solar is still moving from policy ambition to routine procurement.

The industrial decarbonisation imperative

Yet, this macro-energy architecture does not resolve the equation confronting Ivorian industry. Mining operators, agro-processors and manufacturers face mounting pressure from international offtakers and development finance institutions to demonstrate the traceability of their power supply. Scope 2 emissions now concentrate the attention of sectoral climate commitments. The carbon footprint of a mining operation or a cocoa processing plant shall soon weigh heavier than the commodity price itself.

In a market structured around a single buyer, where CI-Energies remains the obligatory intermediary between independent producers and end consumers, the industrial offtaker cannot contract directly with a renewable producer. Two avenues are available in theory: self-generation and the Corporate PPA. 

In practice, only the first works.

Self-generation in practice

Self-generation operates behind the meter, not beyond the grid. An industrial offtaker may remain connected to the national network whilst installing captive renewable capacity on-site. This hybrid configuration, combining security of supply via the grid with tariff optimisation through on-site solar, is progressively establishing itself as standard for new industrial facilities.

The Lafigué gold mine, operated by Endeavour Mining since June 2024, illustrates this model: connected to the national grid via a 225 kV line, it integrates captive photovoltaic capacity to optimise its energy costs. The deployment by SolarX of 545 kWp for Orange CI at Yamoussoukro extends the approach beyond extractives into telecommunications.

Under Ivorian law, however, the authorisation holder must own the installation.

This constraint orients contractual arrangements towards lease-to-own structures or sales with deferred payment, the industrial player being destined to acquire the generation assets at the conclusion of the contractual period. Unlike a Corporate PPA where the producer retains ownership and bears performance risk, Ivorian self-generation transfers both ownership and risk to the offtaker. 

These arrangements raise specific structuring challenges: security packages over assets whose ownership transfers progressively, step-in rights calibrated to phased acquisition, performance guarantees that survive the transition from operator to owner. Drawing on its experience advising industrial players and financiers, CMS has developed tailored approaches to these constraints, including hybrid security structures and contractual mechanisms that bridge the gap between operational control and legal ownership.

One further point. Captive solar behind a grid connection creates intermittency that CI-Energies must absorb through spinning reserves. Other markets have responded by introducing standby charges once distributed generation reached critical mass. Prudent project economics should factor in this regulatory tail risk.

Corporate PPAs 

Corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs), a privileged instrument of industrial energy transition in mature jurisdictions, remains a dead letter in Côte d'Ivoire. The 2014 Electricity Code and Decree 2016-783 do provide for sales to an 'eligible customer'. Yet Wilde's adage proves apt: to define is to limit. To inscribe such faculty in statute, absent the regulatory framework to give it force, is not to enable but to circumscribe. Ten years in, this framework has yielded not a single contract. By contrast, South Africa's Corporate PPA market has grown tenfold since regulatory relaxation in 2021; Kenya allows up to 1 MW of self-generation without complex licensing and facilitates wheeling across the national grid.

No wheeling tariff has been published. The current concession framework, which runs until 2032, grants exclusive rights over transmission and distribution. In the absence of a defined compensation mechanism for third-party network use, the regulatory preconditions for grid access remain incomplete. The wheeling tariff has become shorthand for a broader negotiation, one that must reconcile existing contractual arrangements with the government's market-opening ambitions.

Outlook

The Ivoirian electricity regulator ANARE-CI, with technical support from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, has been finalising the wheeling methodology in 2025 and 2026. Should this reform reach fruition, industrial players would be able to contract directly with renewable producers upon payment of a transit charge, bypassing the single buyer. The Ivorian market would thereby pivot from a purchase monopoly towards an architecture wherein private offtake becomes structuring for the financing of new projects.

Self-generation constitutes, under the current state of the law, the sole practicable avenue. The operationalisation of the Corporate PPA would substantially widen the range of options available to industrial consumers. 

Foucaud Jaulin is a partner in the Energy & Climate Change and Infrastructure & Projects practices of CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, with substantial experience in project development and financing of international infrastructure projects, particularly in Africa and emerging countries. He has featured in Jeune Afrique’s list of 100 Most Influential Lawyers in Francophone Africa. 

Pierre-Benoît Drancourt is an associate at CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocat who advises developers, industrial players, international groups, and investment funds on infrastructure and energy projects, primarily in Africa and other emerging markets.