“When night falls in Akanu in southeast Nigeria, the streets are lit. That’s something people in the rural settlement of 100,000 haven’t seen since 2020, when access to the national grid in the area broke down and was never repaired…

Solar power is what’s driving this transformation across Africa’s most populous nation. After decades of having to retire at dusk or rely on noisy, smelly and expensive diesel generators, local communities are able to take the energy supply into their own hands, thanks to the availability of cheap solar panels and battery storage. In the year to June, Nigeria imported 1,721 megawatts of photovoltaic panels—enough to meet 5% of the country’s demand—up from less than 500MW in 2021, according to climate think tank Ember. Nigeria has become second only to South Africa for solar imports on the continent…

Historically the Nigerian economy has depended largely on generators. The national grid—built mostly since the 1960s and powered primarily by natural gas—is capable of supplying about 4 gigawatts of power, compared with more than six times that in South Africa, a country with a quarter of Nigeria’s population. As much as 75GW of electricity is supplied by gasoline and diesel-fired generators. That has left some 90 million people—roughly 38% of the population—with little to no access to power in Nigeria, more than in any other nation on Earth.”

From Bloomberg.