How do international development organisations develop institutional capacity in conflict zones? Here we take a descriptive, topological perspective on the question, using the case of Afghanistan. For twenty years prior to the capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021 the international community directed substantial resources to Afghanistan, seeking to build a democratic state. Here we examine selected, energy-related aspects of those institution-building processes, taking the country as a case study of institutional development for energy and other transitions that is explicitly driven by particular values. We use the transition topology approach to map energy-related institutional development over two decades. We find that this institutional development can be categorized in terms of three main themes: development of a regulatory framework for the energy sector; privatisation of energy systems; and women's empowerment in terms of knowledge, skills and engagement in energy sector provisioning. The case contributes to an understanding of the types of institutional changes that transnational actors seek to induce, how they do this, and what types of outcomes can be achieved.