Nigeria has become Africa’s largest small-scale solar market, drawing $2.4 billion in investment as households and businesses turn to rooftop solar and batteries to cope with worsening blackouts and high fuel costs, according to BloombergNEF’s latest Sub-Saharan Africa Clean Energy Market Outlook.

Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole attracted $13.5 billion in renewable energy investment in 2025, the third straight year above $12 billion, even as high financing costs continued to limit large utility-scale projects in many countries. South Africa remained the region’s top destination with $20.4 billion drawn in since 2023, followed by Nigeria at $5.4 billion, Kenya at $4.3 billion, Senegal at $1.8 billion, Namibia at $1.2 billion, Angola at $993 million, the DRC at $874 million and Tanzania at $776 million. Solar dominated the region’s investment mix, accounting for $10.9 billion, and small-scale solar investment more than doubled year-on-year to $8.5 billion, led by Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.

BNEF said over 99% of Nigeria’s 2025 renewable investment went into small-scale solar because such projects are easier to finance than large grid-connected plants, with the country’s 27% benchmark interest rate making local-currency borrowing largely unworkable for capital-intensive projects and pushing developers toward foreign financiers. Nigeria’s installed electricity capacity of about 20GW is projected to reach 30GW by 2030, with renewables making up 30% of that total, while cumulative solar capacity is expected to climb from 2.4GW in 2026 to 7.8GW by 2030 and 16.2GW by 2035.

The report also linked the region’s renewable growth to broader economic expansion, projecting Nigeria’s economy will grow more than 4% through 2028, driven mainly by services and by oil and gas refining activity including rising output from the Dangote Refinery. Beyond investment flows, Sub-Saharan Africa recorded the fastest year-on-year growth in Chinese solar imports of any region between early 2025 and early 2026, with its share of China’s global solar exports roughly doubling to 10% by March 2026.

Source: guardian.ng