More than $50-billion has been committed to an ambitious plan to halve the number of people without access to electricity in Africa, according to the World Bank, its biggest backer.

The programme, named Mission 300 because of its goal to bring electricity to 300-million people by 2030, has delivered power to 44-million people since it was officially announced at a conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in January last year.

There “is a pipeline of tens of millions more by the end of 2026,” the World Bank said in a statement. Committed finance includes concessional loans from both its own resources and the African Development Bank, as well as money from other development finance institutions and the private sector, it said.

The programme is a drive to break one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest impediments to growth: Almost half of its population, or 570-million people, have no access to electricity. That limits education, curbs employment and cuts productivity in a region where 70% of the population are younger than 30.