Nigeria

With a higher population than any other African country, Nigeria is on its way to becoming the most populous country in the world.

But Nigerian electrification rates have always sat around the 50% mark — with just 55.4% of Nigerians found to have electricity access in 2020 — and the country’s power supply is notoriously unreliable, resulting in regular blackouts just like those in South Africa. 

Electrifying the country is not Nigeria’s only concern, either; it also has to tackle its reliance on fossil fuels, having been the continent’s largest crude oil producer until September 2022, when it was overtaken by Angola.

Steps have been taken to improve Nigeria’s energy situation, with the country striving to have renewable electricity account for 30% of total electricity generation by 2030 as part of the Nigeria SE4ALL initiative.

Nigeria is also working towards reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 via its Energy Transition Plan (ETP), making expanding into the solar energy sector one of its top priorities. To help boost its PV capacity, Nigeria increased the ETP mini-grid licensing regulations from 1MW to 5MW in October 2022.

Plus, after the pandemic, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) launched Soltar Power Naija (SPN), which sets out to create five million new electricity connections across the country by providing solar home systems (SHS) and links to mini-grids — and the results look positive so far.

Planned Projects

SPN launched the deployment of 100,000 solar home systems (SHS) in 2021. Since then, several other initiatives have followed suit.

For example, Sterling and Wilson signed a 961MW/455MWh solar storage deal with the Nigerian government in September 2022, with five different sites set to pop up within the next few years. Shortly after, the Combe State government partnered with the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) to build a 250MW solar power plant.

Plenty of promising solar projects were also announced at the start of 2023. For example, in February 2023, the Nigerian president inaugurated a 10MW PV plant — the country’s largest PV plant connected to the grid.

Husk Power Systems also kicked off 2023 by securing $750,000 in funding for mini-grid projects in Nasarawa State, following the announcement earlier in 2022 that it would build 500 Nigerian microgrids by 2026. These grids are expected to connect more than 500 residential and commercial customers and reduce the number of diesel generators by 400.

SegenSolar is keen to foster the development of additional small and large-scale PV installations across Nigeria. If you are a homeowner, you can get in touch for more details about our work. If you are an installer, you can explore our product range on our portal — just log in or sign up for a free account.