The EAC region’s energy landscape is dominated by renewable energy sources, which account for 81.41% of the region’s installed capacity.
Renewable energy sources in the region include hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and biomass. Fossil fuels, that is, natural gas, heavy fuel oil and diesel, accounted for 18.59% of the region’s capacity.
Hydro is the dominant source of electrical energy in the EAC region, representing two-thirds of the region’s electrical power source.
It accounted for 65.15% of the total installed capacity in the region. The DRC, Uganda and Tanzania are the leading three countries in installed hydro capacity with installed capacities of 2,901MW, 1,718MW and 1,519MW, respectively.
Thermal sources came in second, accounting for 18.59% of total installed capacity.
Tanzania is the only country with natural gas generation in the region with an installed capacity of 1,010MW. This accounts for 9.51% of the region’s installed capacity.
Other thermal sources include Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), Medium Speed Diesel (MSD) and Kerosene fired turbine generation. Kenya accounts for most of the HFO generation with an installed capacity of 572MW.
At an installed capacity of 940MW, geothermal is the third-ranking source of electrical power, accounting for 8.16% of the region’s capacity. All this capacity is in Kenya. Wind and solar PV generation accounted for a combined 6.75% of the region’s capacity.
The installed capacity of wind generation stood at 439MW, accounting for 3.85% of installed capacity. Kenya has the highest wind generation capacity at 99.46% with the balance in Tanzania.
Solar PV generation accounted for 2.85% of the region’s capacity with 329MW installed as of June 2025. Kenya also leads on this with 210MW.
Uganda has 87MW while Rwanda has 12MW of solar generation. The remaining 20MW in Tanzania, DRC and
Burundi. Generation from biomass accounted for 1.45% of the region’s capacity.
