Africa’s solar market is diversifying, with more national-level markets making significant strides in the deployment of larger-scale solar projects.
Benjamin Clarke, Director of Operations at the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) told pv magazine a number of countries, namely Tanzania, Zambia and Algeria, have made significant progress this year, with utility-scale projects arriving quickly.
“What we are seeing more and more is a diversification of the market, which is a very, very, good sign,” Clarke said during the Smarter E event in Munich, Germany. “As we can’t just rely on the traditionally largest markets to lead the statistics for the rest of the continent.”
Away from the utility-scale projects, Clarke noted continued growth in Africa’s commercial and industrial (C&I) market segment as another key driver, driven by improved project economics.
He shared that system costs now sit between $0.08/kWh and $0.20/kWh, compared to approximately $0.38/kWh for diesel.
“The economics have massively improved,” he says, adding that businesses are increasingly turning to solar either to go fully off-grid and shield themselves from volatile grid electricity prices, or to secure reliable backup power. Data centres and mining companies are emerging as particularly active procurers, with the latter’s strong balance sheets making them attractive partners for developers.
Interest among smaller businesses is also growing, although Clarke identified pre-financing as a sticking point for some of this market: “That is a bit of a bottleneck for the C&I segment at the moment, working out how to refinance these things,” he explained.
Project financing has traditionally been a barrier facing solar and hybrid solar projects across Africa. When asked by pv magazine whether that remains the case, Clarke described a continent-wide spectrum from highly-centralized utility monopolies with little room for private investment, through to more liberalized markets, such as South Africa, with established procurement frameworks. Most countries, he explained, sit somewhere in between.
Development finance institutions (DFIs) continue to underpin much of what gets built. Clarke explained that infrastructure project default rates stand at 5% in Africa, lower than North America or Europe, alongside a 100% recovery rate in the event of default, made possible in part by DFI backing.
Clarke said private capital is beginning to follow in more mature markets helping to build financing capacity within national banking systems. But in other countries, a DFI-backed project or government guarantee remains key for realizing projects.
Elsewhere, Africa’s local manufacturing sector is also growing, Clarke said, with key areas of activity including Indian companies considering assembly points in East Africa as well as a South African project exploring solar cell production.
AFSIA is continuing to develop its online project database, which tracks projects of all sizes across all African nations. As of today, the database has tracked over 26,000 operational projects across the continent.
“I think we tracked about 3.5 GWp in 2025 and up to this moment in 2026 we’ve found 2.7 GWp,” Clarke told pv magazine. “So if we continue at the rate we’re going, we’re going to see a significant increase in the rate of installations this year.”
Clarke also said AFSIA’s work on locating installed projects that are yet to be represented in official statistics continues.
“We’re talking to contractors in markets where we feel we haven’t had the best coverage to unearth projects that happened a couple of years ago that we haven’t yet found,” he explained. “So it’s a continuous and ongoing piece of work.”
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