ABSTRACTThis paper investigates how institutional quality conditions energy consumption to influence private capital inflows in Africa using data from 1990 to 2019. The paper employed a modified dynamic system GMM. Our results show that energy consumption has a direct influence on private capital inflows, particularly FDI to Africa. Institutional qualities do not directly influence the effect of energy consumption on FDI but do influence the effect on portfolio investment. However, independently, institutional quality positively motivates FDI inflows into Africa. On the contrary, the reverse analysis showed that private capital inflows do not influence energy consumption in Africa.