What a decade of power sector reform actually taught us
18 July 2026 · Ecovalley Advisers
Reviewing and updating the Electricity Supply Industry Reform Strategy Roadmap meant taking honest stock of what a decade of reform delivered and what it did not. The technical pathways are well understood. The harder questions are sequencing, the operational and financial sustainability of TANESCO, and whether the institutions asked to deliver reform have the mandate and capacity to do it. Our recommendations focused less on new ambition and more on making the existing ambition deliverable.
Reviewing and updating the Electricity Supply Industry Reform Strategy Roadmap meant taking honest stock of what a decade of reform delivered and what it did not. The technical pathways are well understood. The harder questions are sequencing, the operational and financial sustainability of TANESCO, and whether the institutions asked to deliver reform have the mandate and capacity to do it. Our recommendations focused less on new ambition and more on making the existing ambition deliverable.
What this means in practice
Expand this article with the detail behind the headline: what was measured, what surprised the team, and what you would advise anyone facing the same problem.
More from the work
Monitoring frameworks that change decisions, not just fill reports
Most monitoring systems collect what is easy to count. Building the Energy Sector Monitoring and Evaluation Framework taught us to start from the decision a manager needs to make, then work backwards to the indicator. The manual separates tools by the nature of the institution, an agency, a regulator, a parastatal, because a single template applied across all of them measures nothing well.
Why water policy succeeds or fails at district level
Assessing implementation of the National Water Policy showed a familiar pattern: the policy was sound, but the gap between national intent and district delivery was where outcomes were won or lost. Capacity, budget timing and data flow at district level explained more of the variation than any provision in the policy itself.
Building a learning hub inside a national agency
Working with RUWASA on the Learning Hub Model, the aim was never to hand over a report. It was to design, test and embed tools the agency would keep using, and to build training from real case studies rather than theory. Reform sticks when the institution can run it without the consultant in the room.