Africa recorded its fastest year of solar growth in 2025, with installations rising by 54% year-on-year.

According to the Global Solar Council’s Africa Market Outlook for Solar PV: 2026–2029, this surge marks the highest annual solar deployment on the continent to date, surpassing the previous 2023 record and exceeding last year’s medium-term deployment forecast.

Africa added approximately 4.5 GW of new solar PV capacity in 2025. The top ten solar markets accounted for nearly 90% of these additions, led by South Africa (1.6 GW), Nigeria (803 MW), Egypt (500 MW), and Algeria (400 MW).

Beyond headline capacity figures, recent solar equipment imports and deployment trends point to a market that is becoming more diversified, with households and businesses increasingly driving adoption alongside traditional utility-scale projects.

One of the report’s key findings is that Africa is now running two energy transitions in parallel.

The first is a government-led transition centred on grid-connected, utility-scale solar projects, largely financed through public budgets and development finance institutions.

The second is a privately financed transition, driven by rooftop, commercial, and distributed solar systems deployed by households and businesses seeking reliable and affordable power.

“Solar plus storage is the hope of Africa,” said Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council. “This is the technology that can bring energy access, sustainable development, green growth, and resilience to natural disasters and extreme weather.”

Yet financing structures have not kept pace with how the market is evolving. Around 82% of clean energy finance in Africa still comes from public and development sources, leaving funding frameworks heavily skewed toward large, utility-scale projects.

While private clean energy investment has grown, it remains poorly suited to distributed solar, which typically requires smaller ticket sizes, shorter loan tenors, and local currency financing.

As a result, many consumer-led and commercial solar projects, ranging from rooftop systems powering urban small businesses to distributed installations serving off-grid households, face higher financing costs or limited access to capital, despite strong underlying demand.

“With Africa’s energy demand expected to grow eightfold by 2050, and the continent holding around 60% of the world’s best solar resources, solar paired with battery storage is critical to delivering affordable and reliable power at scale,” said Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.

She added that greater effort is needed to attract clean energy investment through mechanisms that mobilise public, private, and philanthropic finance.

Looking ahead, the report’s medium-term outlook suggests Africa could install more than 33 GW of solar capacity by 2029.

However, as deployment increasingly shifts toward distributed, consumer-led, and commercial solar, existing finance, planning, and regulatory frameworks are becoming misaligned with market realities.

Without reform, this misalignment risks slowing deployment, raising system costs, and limiting the broader economic and resilience benefits that solar can deliver.

Realizing Africa’s solar opportunity will therefore depend not only on continued growth, but on aligning finance, planning, and regulation with how the market is already changing.

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