By Hassan Osman Kargbo
Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, Energy Sector Lead and Chairman of Sierra Leone’s Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security, has shared an extensive update on the nation’s landmark energy project, Mission 300, valued at $2.2 billion. He made the announcement during the weekly press briefing organized by the Ministry of Information and Civic Education on Tuesday, 7th October 2025.
Dr. Yumkella disclosed that Sierra Leone’s Mission 300 Energy Compact has received full endorsement from the World Bank and other major development partners. “The President recently received full endorsement of Sierra Leone’s Mission 300 Energy Compact from the World Bank and development partners in New York,” he said. “This approval came in record time, showing how much trust partners have in our strategy and leadership.”
He stressed that the government’s approach was based on building from existing institutional knowledge and research instead of starting from scratch. “It’s not every day you reinvent the wheel,” Dr. Yumkella noted. “If you’re a good policy person, you return to the institutions, look at previous studies, and build on them with new analytics. That’s how we created a solid, viable plan in a short period.”
At the core of Mission 300 is the vision to transform Sierra Leone’s power landscape. The plan aims to increase installed electricity capacity from 271 megawatts to over 1,000 megawatts, raise electrification rates from 36% to 78%, and expand renewable energy generation from 46% to nearly 52% within five years. Dr. Yumkella described the project as “the single biggest initiative for electrification in Africa,” emphasizing its goal to make electricity accessible to every Sierra Leonean, particularly those in rural areas.
Public health remains a major focus of the initiative. “About 90% of the population does not have access to clean cooking,” he explained. “We estimate that between
