Off-grid solar in Sub-Saharan Africa: the multi-gigawatt opportunity hiding in plain sight

Six hundred million people across Sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to reliable electricity. The national grid was meant to reach them, but it has not kept pace with accelerating population growth.

Off-grid solar PV is quietly becoming Sub-Saharan Africa’s primary electrification engine. In fact, we forecast that total installed off-grid solar PV in the region will grow sixfold by 2035. This is a story about economics: diesel that has become too expensive to run, modules that have become too cheap to ignore, and private capital that is learning to finance the gap left by undeveloped national grids.

We explore this in depth in our new report, Off-grid solar PV in Sub-Saharan Africa: a multi-gigawatt growth opportunity. Wood Mackenzie Lens Solar subscribers can read it in full, or read on for a summary of the key themes.

Nigeria and Kenya anchor Sub-Saharan Africa’s off-grid solar demand, but for very different reasons

Nigeria alone accounts for close to 35% of off-grid-solar installations in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2035. The driver is clear: since the 2023 fuel-subsidy removal, diesel self-generation has become punishingly expensive and solar-as-a-service now undercuts it. For a commercial or industrial user, displacing even a quarter of load with solar delivers immediate savings, with many developers providing the solar PV system at no upfront cost.

Kenya tells the opposite story. As the continent's most mature off-grid market, its growth is no longer about first-time access but about cost optimisation, even as the grid catches up. As net-metering rules and grid extension take hold, Kenyan demand is shifting from off-grid as a source of first-time electricity toward off-grid used where it makes commercial sense.

Mining is turning the DRC and the copper belt into an off-grid solar heavyweight

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will be a leader in off-grid solar, underpinned by one of the strongest mining-linked solar pipelines on the continent.

As of summer 2026, the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex is served by an integrated 233 MWdc solar-and-storage facility delivering guaranteed baseload power. It shows what is now possible – renewable baseload that competes with and displaces diesel in heavy industry. With copper-belt mining a significant source of emissions, the opportunity to replace on-site fossil generation is large.

Falling costs are a key enabler, however financing is a major barrier to off-grid solar in Sub-Saharan Africa

The affordability case keeps strengthening. Sub-Saharan markets, excluding South Africa, have imported over 27 GWdc of modules since 2022, and falling module costs sustain the case through the decade. Value stacking – layering finance, appliances and services onto the energy sale – is turning off-grid solar from a product into a platform business and making more deployments bankable.

However, financing remains the binding constraint for off-grid solar in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currency depreciation and double-digit interest rates keep the cost of capital high, and inconsistent rural-electrification policy remains a persistent drag. 

How much of this multi-gigawatt opportunity is realised will depend not on demand, which is not in doubt, but increasingly on the private and blended-finance models emerging to bridge the funding gap.

The full off-grid solar market outlook, including ten modelled markets, country-level forecasts to 2035 and deeper analysis is available via Lens Solar.