Energy, Featured
By Christabel Ejenike
THE Africa Solar Industry Association in collaboration with Powerlec Nigeria released the 2025 outlook report for Africa Solar sector on Tuesday in Lagos.
The 2025 outlook report is the 5th edition of the Africa Solar Outlook, which provides a comprehensive report, key analysis and insights into Africa’s major solar development.
According to the 2025, solar outlook for Africa, solar continues to grow at impressive rate across the globe.
The data from the AFISA report also shows that annual installation capacity for solar went from 41.6 as at 2010 to 503 and the year on year growth of the solar installed capacity increased by 44% which passed the TW mark.
It noted that Africa continues to progress, although with a significant gap compared to the rest of the world.
The 2025 outlook Africa has also added 2.5 GWP of new solar capacity in the past year, 2024, which is 0.5% of global new solar capacity.
It added that the total installed capacity of Africa’s solar reached 19.2 GWP, which sums up to 1% of the global installed capacity and in 2024 two African countries installed over 100 MW (+1) and 29 countries installed over 1MW(+2) with countries and South Africa, Egypt, Zambia, Nigeria, and Angola ranking top 5 respectively as the largest new solar capacities installed in 2024.
Despite the progress made, it seems the solar business is still highly concentrated in only two countries as 78% of almost the 2.5 GWP installed in Africa comes from South Africa and Egypt, which represent 50% and 29% of the continent’s performance.
According to the outlook report 2025, there may be a major shift in solar distribution as several landmark projects have started construction in countries that do not belong to the group of “usual suspects” for solar leaders in Africa.
It noted that in 2024, utility-scale solar made a comeback representing almost 72% of all new capacity installed which is a major shift from the last two years when commercial and Industrial, C&I solar was leading.
$$ However, C&I remains important in South Africa representing e9% of the country’s solar market. (Check this sentence and effect correction)
The report also stated that Nigeria is not a fertile for utility-scale solar due to the poor grid infrastructure of the country, hence, C&I, mini grids and residential solar are most prevalent.
16th January, 2025.
C.E.
Tags: AFISA
