By Adonis Byemelwa
This core question opened the curtain on controversies surrounding East Africa’s nuclear development roadmap. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame formally announced yesterday at the African Nuclear Energy Summit, hosted in Kigali, that his country would bring civilian nuclear power online in the early 2030s.
This statement marked a profound shift in African countries’ understanding of 21st-century energy, industrialisation, and national sovereignty, and immediately sent shockwaves across East Africa’s entire policy community.
In particular, it pushed Tanzania, a country rich in uranium reserves, with rising demand for industrialisation, and long plagued by power shortages, to quickly restart dedicated discussions on the necessity of developing its own nuclear power program.
Over the past decades, most African governments have positioned electricity as an inclusive public welfare service; today, a new consensus has formed across the continent: electricity is a core piece of geopolitical infrastructure, just as important as ports, railways, and military power.
Countries that cannot access stable, sufficient energy supplies will be permanently locked out of the global race in advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, high-value-added mineral processing, and the digital economy.
This deep-seated strategic anxiety is the core driver that led Rwanda, a small African economy, to pursue the continent’s most ambitious leap in energy technology. In his remarks at the summit, Kagame repeatedly emphasised that reliable electricity is the core pillar supporting industrialisation.
Rwanda’s nuclear plan has also secured multiple forms of concrete support: it recently received the first-phase comprehensive assessment report on its nuclear infrastructure from Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has signed cooperation agreements with the United States, Holtec International, and the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board to deploy SMR-300 small modular reactors.
Compared to traditional large-scale nuclear power projects, whose single-unit costs exceed 10 billion US dollars, this reactor type has cost and implementation advantages better suited to regional needs.
Rwanda’s nuclear strategic layout carries significance that extends far beyond its own national development.
Renewable energy development across the entire African continent is facing a shared core contradiction: while resources such as solar and wind power are abundant and expanding at a fast pace, they cannot supply the uninterrupted baseload electricity demanded by heavy industrial facilities, including steel plants, oil refineries, mineral smelters, semiconductor factories, and large-scale data centres.
Reliance on renewable energy alone is insufficient to support Africa’s accelerating industrialisation needs. This contradiction is even more stark in Tanzania, where President Samia Suluhu Hassan has positioned industrialisation as the core of the country’s economic agenda.
Beyond investing in hydropower and natural gas infrastructure and advancing regional energy integration, the Tanzanian government has also quietly strengthened its agencies responsible for atomic research and radiation regulation.
Though it has not announced plans to construct commercial nuclear reactors, the country’s senior policymakers have already integrated nuclear science into the national long-term strategic framework.
The president herself has publicly stressed the necessity of long-term energy planning for the country’s industrialisation, calling for preparations to support future technologies that underpin industrial growth and achieve energy independence. Tanzania also boasts unique strategic endowments.
In addition to its substantial energy demand, the country holds one of Africa’s largest undeveloped uranium reserves. Geological surveys of the Bahi District have identified commercially viable ore deposits, with total uranium resources of roughly 580,000 tons.
Amid the global push for non-carbon energy, Tanzania is well-positioned to transform from a fringe player in the global energy landscape into a potential strategic supplier in the global nuclear economy. However, uranium resources alone cannot guarantee sound industrial development.
Throughout history, many resource-rich African nations have fallen into the trap of “exporting raw mineral ore while importing finished industrial products at steep costs.”
Tanzania must build mature institutional capacity to advance to the high-end links of the nuclear energy industry chain.
Dr Esabi Nyari from the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology notes that African governments have long avoided serious public discussions on nuclear power due to the technology’s complexity and political sensitivity.
He also rejects the oversimplified claim that “nuclear power will replace renewable energy,” emphasising that Tanzania’s domestic renewable energy resources remain extremely abundant.
These resources can effectively upgrade the country’s national power grid if they receive sufficient financing and professional management.
Tanzania is home to high-quality wind energy corridors in Makambako and Singida, abundant solar resources in the Kishapu region, and considerable domestic geothermal development potential.
Combined with the African continent’s rich renewable energy reserves, this study proposes that Africa’s energy transition must avoid the pitfall of relying on a single solution and instead pursue a diversified development pathway.
However, mainstream renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power suffer from the structural flaw of intermittency, which makes it hard for them to deliver consistent, stable energy output.
Nyari, a proponent of nuclear power, put forward a core argument in response: nuclear power, which provides stable baseload energy, can fill the low-output gaps in renewable energy and match the continuous energy supply required to support Africa’s industrialisation.
Multiple global and regional precedents back this logic: Sweden has realised coordinated regulation and storage of hydropower and nuclear power; India is expanding its nuclear power capacity to meet the energy demands of its domestic manufacturing sector; South Africa operates the only commercial nuclear power plant in Africa; and Egypt is currently constructing the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Project.
However, regional energy analysts, environmental organisations, and nuclear power critics gathered at the Kigali Summit have identified the core barriers to nuclear power deployment in Africa, point by point.
First, the extremely high economic threshold means most heavily indebted African countries cannot afford to advance nuclear power projects while also sustaining investment in basic energy services for their people.
Second, insufficient local institutional capacity means they cannot support the safe operation of nuclear power projects over the long term. Furthermore, Africa lacks mature infrastructure for nuclear waste storage, and the development of civilian nuclear power could also trigger geopolitical risks related to nuclear proliferation.
These overlapping challenges leave the prospects for nuclear power deployment in Africa highly uncertain. This paper opens with an argument focused on the practical constraints and transition opportunities for nuclear power development in the East African region.
The paper first examines Tanzania’s progress in preparing for future nuclear power development and outlines the institutional groundwork already established in recent years.
Drawing on plans released by the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission, it argues that Tanzania’s immediate priority should not be the construction of commercial nuclear reactors, but rather expanding the national power grid and strengthening the reliability of its existing energy supply system.
The analysis then turns to Rwanda’s strategy for deploying a small modular reactor (SMR). It argues that if Rwanda successfully operationalises SMRs in the early 2030s, the country could establish the first scalable and replicable nuclear energy model for developing nations with limited capital and fragile electricity infrastructure across East Africa.
Energy scholar Dr Esabi Nyari maintains that Tanzania must first invest heavily in nuclear science education and local technical expertise before advancing commercial reactor projects.
It is worth concluding that strong domestic talent, mature regulatory institutions, and financial resilience remain essential prerequisites for successful nuclear development, warning that poorly managed uranium resources could ultimately become a developmental burden rather than an economic advantage.
