In the end, 2025 was a major year for renewables in Africa — especially solar. Beyond the sharp rise in solar panel imports from China and the European Union’s economic commitments to clean electricity deployment, last year also set a record for solar growth across the continent.
As the Global Solar Council’s Africa Market Outlook for Solar PV: 2026–2029 report shows, Africa installed about 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of new solar PV capacity in 2025 — a 54% increase year on year.
And the future outlook appears to be positive: according to the association, in fact, African countries could add more than 33 GW of solar capacity by 2029 – six times the 2025 figures – thanks to the expansion of both distributed and utility scale.
On the one hand, then, are PV installations on the roofs of homes and businesses aimed at self-consumption, and on the other, large parks that supply power to the electricity grid.
According to Sonia Dunlop, administrator of the Global Solar Council, photovoltaics coupled with storage “is the technology that can ensure energy access, sustainable development, green growth and resilience to natural disasters” on a continent where much of the population is still not connected to the electricity grid and depends on diesel-powered generators.
The Numbers of Solar Growth in Africa
The African countries driving new solar capacity installations in 2025 were South Africa (1.6 GW), Nigeria (803 megawatts), Egypt (500 MW) and Algeria (400 MW). But Morocco (204 MW), Zambia (139 MW), Tunisia (120 MW) and Botswana (120 MW) also stood out. Overall, eight African nations installed at least 100 MW of PV last year, up from just four in 2024.
Large utility-scale systems accounted for more than half of the total installed capacity. Distributed ones, on the other hand, were worth 44%, but the figure would be “clearly underestimated” due to increased tracking difficulties. It is precisely these tracking limitations that could explain the discrepancy between the Global Solar Council’s figures and the more modest ones from the African Solar Industry Association, which estimated a 2.4 GW increase in PV capacity in Africa by 2025.
The Importance of Financing
The Global Solar Council report indicates that thanks to renewables, two parallel energy transitions are taking place in Africa. The first is based on large grid-connected projects, government-led and financed with public resources and development finance instruments. The second transition, on the other hand, is supported by private capital and made up of distributed residential or commercial PV installations.
The vast majority – 82%, to be precise – of clean-energy financing in Africa comes from public sources or development finance institutions. In contrast, individuals who would like to install solar systems above an industrial shed face more unfavourable conditions and limited access to capital. According to the Global Solar Council, financing formulas tailored to the needs of these individuals are needed.
What To Do To Push on Panel Installation
Despite high solar potential, PV capacity installations in Africa are still low compared to other regions of the world, and the continent’s electricity generation mix is dominated by natural gas and coal. But the scenario, as seen, is beginning to change.
“Africa has 60 percent of the world’s solar potential, and the adoption of this energy source is increasing in three ways: in large desert installations of more than 100 MW, especially in Algeria, Egypt, and South Africa; in small installations near cities of 10-20 MW, especially in West Africa; and by citizens buying panels and installing them on the roofs of their homes,” Dave Jones, an analyst at Ember and author of the study, explains to WIRED.
For utility-scale projects, the expert continued, the real bottleneck “is the lack of vision on the part of governments: typically these installations are guaranteed by contracts, but it is the government that has to propose the contract in the first place. Even though solar is the cheapest and fastest form of electricity generation, governments are slow to sign new contracts.”
As far as citizens are concerned, however, according to Jones, “the obstacles are lower financially: panels cost only about $60.” And he cites the example of Pakistan, where “the massive consumer-driven solar boom has been mostly self-financed.”
Ember’s study states that a solar panel can pay back diesel expenses in a matter of months. In Nigeria, for example, a 420-watt device costs around $60 and produces 550 kilowatt-hours per year; in contrast, $60 worth of diesel fuel (at a price of $0.6 per liter) produces about 275 KWh.
The payback period, then, is six months, and it becomes even shorter in other parts of Africa where diesel is more expensive. In 9 of the 10 African countries that imported the most solar devices last year, the value of refined oil imports exceeded that of panels by a factor of between 30 and 107 times.
