Electricity infrastructure remains inefficient, unreliable and inequitably distributed in Africa today – a fact that explains the theoretical declarations calling for indispensable reforms. And yet it is difficult to say whether this new discourse has considered the history of uneven reforms to the electricity sector on the continent. This article sheds light on current development trends by drawing lessons from reforms conducted in the 1990s and 2000s in Ghana and Tanzania. The author analyses the influence of electricity sector industry reform on the economic processes at work in both countries, as well as their limitations. He examines the power dynamics at play in terms of power, knowledge and appropriation between the World Bank, which funded and promoted the reforms, the recipient governments that implemented them, and the affected public companies, often reticent towards their introduction.