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This report, produced by Ember in partnership with African Tech Futures Lab (ATFL), presents Ember’s estimates of solar power capacity installed in every African country from 2023 to 2026, built from Chinese customs data using a new calibrated methodology. It compares these estimates with official national and international statistics, examines the split between utility-scale and distributed solar, and reviews Africa’s emerging solar panel manufacturing. It follows Ember’s August 2025 report, “The first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa.”
A year after Ember found the first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa, a new methodology makes the boom measurable – and shows it running far ahead of the official record.
Chinese exports of solar panels to Africa surged in the 12 months to June 2026, to levels similar to each of the Middle East and Latin America. This report introduces a new methodology, showing around 73% of Chinese imports globally have been installed, with an average six-month delay. This makes it possible to estimate full-year 2026 installations already. This shows 17 GW of solar was installed in 2026, equal to around 100,000 solar panels every day. That is a 45% rise year-on-year; 2025 rose by 51% and 2024 by 25%.
19 countries have seen year-on-year growth of over 100%, including 544% in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 282% in Zimbabwe, 176% in Egypt and 117% in Zambia. Solar growth used to be dominated by South Africa, but its share of African installations in 2026 will be below 20% for the first time since 2019, as other countries surge. Solar is now the single biggest addition to grid capacity in many African countries – Senegal will add solar capacity from 2023 to 2026 equivalent to almost 80% of its entire 2023 grid capacity, with DRC and Kenya adding more than half.
2026’s installations will generate around 23 TWh a year – 2.3% of Africa’s electricity generation, above the 2.2% average annual demand growth of 2014 to 2024. There are ten countries where 2026’s new solar will add more than 10% to annual grid electricity generation – Sierra Leone (97%), Togo (24%), Somalia (21%), Djibouti (21%), DRC (14%), Comoros (14%), Namibia (12%), Liberia (12%), Chad (11%), Lesotho (10%). Together these countries are home to 190 million people.
Ember’s 2025 solar growth estimate is twice that of international statistics – 12.0 GW in 2025, compared with 6.2 GW from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and 4.6 GW from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Ember forecasts annual installations in 2026 will rise another 45%, potentially increasing this gap further. However, international reporting can only be as good as national reporting, and that barely exists in many countries. We could only find official reporting for national solar capacity for 36 out of 54 countries; only 14 of those were for 2025, and even those 14 countries seem to underestimate the rise in solar. Only three countries – South Africa, Tunisia and Tanzania – publish some solar data monthly or quarterly.
Distributed solar, which is small-scale, customer-side solar installed mostly on rooftops – makes up most of Africa’s solar growth, and it’s the hardest type to measure. Ember estimates that 75% (20 GW of 26 GW) of the total solar capacity added between 2023 and 2025 is distributed solar. That’s because only a quarter of new solar can be explained by utility-scale and off-grid solar – utility-scale solar is fairly well-documented and visible through government procurement projects, and although off-grid solar is growing fast, its scale would still be very small in context of the gap.
This is the case even in countries with large utility-scale solar projects – in Egypt, for example, still 43% of its solar growth is estimated to be distributed.
There are just 12 countries that report an official or semi-official distributed solar figure, yet those still underestimate the growth. The lack of visibility on distributed solar is not unique to Africa, but a combination of factors makes it worse. A surge in companies, registries and licences show the solar rise is real.
Output will reach around 3.5 GW in 2026, a fifth of what Africa installs, led by new plants in Egypt and Tanzania aimed at the US market. 94% of panels installed in Africa are still imported from China, and huge Chinese cell and wafer shipments to Africa point to re-shipment rather than use in African solar panel manufacturing. Overall, manufacturing data quality is very poor, and it’s hard to state these numbers accurately.
The rise in solar capacity is likely to meet much of Africa’s electricity demand growth, and the sheer scale of cheap new supply could spur more demand growth too, creating huge human benefits.
Some of the solar is undoubtedly up-ending Africa’s diesel economics. Batteries, paired with solar, are the new diesel generator. A year of Chinese panel imports cost $2.4 billion USD; generating the same electricity from diesel would cost around that every three months. Africa is now importing more dollars of batteries than solar panels from China, led by Nigeria and DRC.
The rapid spread of distributed solar in sub-Saharan Africa is an underreported success story. However, since African countries are running blind to this change, they are not reflecting this rise in distributed solar in their plans. This will impact grid and battery investments. Countries also need to make sure they don’t overinvest in fossil fuel power plants that will sit idle.
It’s incredible seeing so many businesses and individuals, across so many African countries, choosing to install solar. Solar panels have become so cheap, the economics are compelling. But so much of this growth is hidden from view – national governments need to get better at gathering solar data. Countries are already leapfrogging into faster, more secure, cleaner energy growth, and the governments that get ahead of it stand to gain all the benefits.
Across Africa, distributed energy resources are rapidly expanding, and in many cases, overtaking grid capacity. This transition is chaotic and disruptive, and far from the orderly model planned in national strategies. Policymakers need to start responding to this shift. The choice now is whether these distributed assets remain a parallel power system that compensates for grid failure or are integrated in ways that unleash a wider range of benefits.
Ember is an energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. Ember is the trading name of Ember Energy Research CIC, a Community Interest Company registered in England & Wales #06714443. ‘Ember’ is a trademark held at the United Kingdom and European Union Intellectual Property Offices. All content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY-4.0). Website powered by 100% renewable electricity.
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