Thursday 7 August, 2025
As part of AXIAN Telecom’s SBTi targets, the company is committed to reducing its scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42% between 2022 and 2030. As such, AXIAN Telecom must notably reduce the use of diesel generators and resort to low-carbon energy, in a context of strong growth and increased connectivity requirements in Africa.
AXIAN Telecom is currently working on Solar4All, a massive solarisation plan of its telecom towers whose objective is to install solar panels on all sites that would benefit both from a climate perspective and from a profitability one. Currently, a fifth of all sites are being investigated, many of which are among the sites having the highest greenhouse gas emissions. In the context of the ongoing elaboration of this plan, AXIAN Telecom’s subsidiary in Uganda, TowerCo of Africa (TOA) Uganda, has undergone the solarisation of 95 sites and the connection of 62 sites to grid, whilst increasing its number of sites by almost 100, reaching 512 sites in 2024. As a result, the renewable energy factor of TOA Uganda increased by 10 percentage points in 2024 compared to 2023, and the grid share by 10 percentage points as well. Currently, 72% of TOA Uganda’s sites have solar panels.
With this dual initiative, TOA Uganda has been able to achieve carbon neutral growth in 2024, and even to reduce its absolute scope 1 & 2 emissions by 1%. This is thanks to the displacement of 35 000 litres of diesel compared to 2023, and 750 000 litres compared to a business-as-usual growth. AXIAN Telecom estimates the avoided emissions of solar development and grid connection in Uganda to around 4800 t CO₂e.
Further development of solar energy is facing challenges such as the strong increase of loads caused by increased traffic. Therefore, TOA’s initiatives have been aimed at diversifying the energy mix of sites to increase continuity of electricity provision. The company is also continuously assessing the solar and grid connection potentials of sites in Uganda, and also in Madagascar and Tanzania.
