Energy trade across Africa and Europe: Long-term national investment and infrastructure pathways for electricity and natural gas

The global energy transition is advancing under the Paris Agreement, yet progress remains fragmented across regions. Africa’s growing energy markets and abundant renewable resources, combined with Europe’s technological and financial capacity, create opportunities for closer energy cooperation. This study develops an open-source cost-optimisation model using the OSeMOSYS framework, covering forty-eight African and thirty European countries. It assesses the long-term costs and emissions impacts of electricity and natural gas trade across six scenarios, combining three levels of cross-border trade (baseline, planned, and unrestricted) with two climate policy pathways (no emission targets and Net-Zero by 2050). Results indicate that deeper interconnection reduces Africa’s installed capacity needs by up to 17% and Europe’s cumulative system costs by up to 18%, while moderating emissions. Although battery storage deployment rises sharply under Net-Zero scenarios, expanded interconnection consistently reduces storage requirements through spatial balancing. Interconnection benefits are driven primarily by intra-continental exchange, whereas direct Africa–Europe electricity trade remains limited but provides valuable balancing flexibility. In contrast, natural gas trade is corridor-based and highly sensitive to infrastructure availability, dominating pathways without emission targets but increasingly shifting toward intra-African trade under Net-Zero pathways. These findings highlight the importance of coordinated electricity and gas infrastructure planning across both continents.