To the people of Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba in Nigeria’s deep south, sundown would mean children doing their homework by the glow of kerosene lamps, and the faint thrum of generators emanating from homes that could afford to run them. Like many rural communities, these two villages of fishermen and farmers in the community of Mbiabet, tucked away in clearings within a dense palm forest, had never been connected to the country’s national electricity grid.
Most of the residents had never heard of solar power either. When, in 2021, a renewable-energy company proposed installing a solar “mini-grid” in their community, the villagers scoffed at the idea of the sun powering their homes. “We didn’t imagine that something [like this] can exist,” says Solomon Andrew Obot, a resident in his early 30s.
The small installation of solar panels, batteries and transmission lines proposed by the company Prado Power would service 180 households in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba, giving them significantly more reliable electricity for a fraction of the cost of diesel generators. Village leaders agreed to the installation, though many residents remained skeptical. But when the panels were set up in 2022, lights blinked on in the brightly painted two-room homes and tan mud huts dotted sparsely through the community. At a village meeting in September, locals erupted into laughter as they recalled walking from house to house, turning on lights and plugging in phone chargers. “I [was] shocked,” Andrew Obot says.
Like many African nations, Nigeria has lagged behind Global North countries in shifting away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Solar power contributes just around 3 percent of the total electricity generated in Africa — though it is the world’s sunniest continent — compared to nearly 12 percent in Germany and 6 percent in the United States.
At the same time, in many African countries, solar power now stands to offer much more than environmental benefits. About 600 million Africans lack reliable access to electricity; in Nigeria specifically, almost half of the 230 million people have no access to electricity grids. Today, solar has become cheap and versatile enough to help bring affordable, reliable power to millions — creating a win-win for lives and livelihoods as well as the climate.
That’s why Nigeria is placing its bets on solar mini-grids — small installations that produce up to 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 1,700 American homes — that can be set up anywhere. Crucially, the country has pioneered mini-grid development through smart policies to attract investment, setting an example for other African nations.
Nearly 120 mini-grids are now installed, powering roughly 50,000 households and reaching about 250,000 people. “Nigeria is actually like a poster child for mini-grid development across Africa,” says energy expert Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani, managing director of EnergyInc Advisors, an energy infrastructure consulting firm.
Though it will take more work — and funding — to expand mini-grids across the continent, Nigeria’s experience demonstrates that they could play a key role in weaning African communities off fossil-fuel-based power. But the people who live there are more concerned with another, immediate benefit: improving livelihoods. Affordable, reliable power from Mbiabet’s mini-grid has already supercharged local businesses, as it has in many places where nonprofits like Clean Technology Hub have supported mini-grid development, says Ifeoma Malo, the organization’s founder. “We’ve seen how that has completely transformed those communities.”
The African energy transition takes shape
Together, Africa’s countries account for less than 5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and many experts, like Malo, take issue with the idea that they need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels; that task should be more urgent for the United States, China, India, the European countries and Russia, which create the bulk of emissions. Nevertheless, many African countries have set ambitious phase-out goals. Some have already turned to locally abundant renewable energy sources, like geothermal power from the Earth’s crust, which supplies nearly half of the electricity produced in Kenya, and hydropower, which creates more than 80 percent of the electricity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda.
But hydropower and geothermal work only where those resources naturally exist. And development of more geographically versatile power sources, like solar and wind, has progressed more slowly in Africa. Though solar is cheaper than fossil-fuel-derived electricity in the long term, upfront construction costs are often higher than they are for building new fossil-fuel power plants.
Getting loans to finance big-ticket energy projects is especially hard in Africa, too. Compared to Europe or the United States, interest rates for loans can be two to three times higher due to perceived risks — for instance, that cash-strapped utility companies, already struggling to collect bills from customers, won’t be able to pay back the loans. Rapid political shifts and currency fluctuations add to the uncertainty. To boot, some Western African nations such as Nigeria charge high tariffs on importing technologies such as solar panels. “There are challenges that are definitely hindering the pace at which renewable energy development could be scaling in the region,” says renewable energy expert Tim Reber of the Colorado-based US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Some African countries are beginning to overcome these barriers and spur renewable energy development, notes Bruno Merven, an expert in energy systems modeling at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, coauthor of a look at renewable energy development in the Annual Review of Resource Economics. Super-sunny Morocco, for example, has phased out subsidies for gasoline and industrial fuel. South Africa is agreeing to buy power from new, renewable infrastructure that is replacing many coal plants that are now being retired.
Nigeria, where only about a quarter of the national grid generates electricity and where many turn to generators for power, is leaning on mini-grids — since expanding the national grid to its remote communities, scattered across an area 1.3 times the size of Texas, would cost a prohibitive amount in the tens of billions of dollars. Many other countries are in the same boat. “The only way by which we can help to electrify the entire continent is to invest heavily in renewable energy mini-grids,” says Stephen Kansuk, the United Nations Development Program’s regional technical advisor for Africa on climate change mitigation and energy issues.
Experts praise the steps Nigeria has taken to spur such development. In 2016, the country’s Electricity Regulatory Commission provided legal guidelines on how developers, electricity distribution companies, regulators, and communities can work together to develop the small grids. This was accompanied by a program through which organizations like the World Bank, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Bezos Earth Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation could contribute funds, making mini-grid investments less financially risky for developers.
Solar power was also made more attractive by a recent decision by Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to remove a long-standing government subsidy on petroleum products. Fossil-fuel costs have been soaring since, for vehicles as well as the generators that many communities rely on. Nigeria has historically been Africa’s largest crude oil producer, but fuel is now largely unaffordable for the average Nigerian, including those living in rural areas, who often live on less than $2 a day. In the crude-oil-rich state of Akwa Ibom, where the Mbiabet villages are located, gasoline was 1,500 naira per liter (around $1) at the time of publishing. “Now that subsidies have come off petrol,” says Akinkugbe-Filani, “we’re seeing a lot more people transition to alternative sources of energy.”
Mini-grids take off
To plan a mini-grid in Nigeria, developers often work with government agencies that have mapped out ideal sites: sunny places where there are no plans to extend the national grid, ensuring that there’s a real power need.
The next step is getting communities on board, which can take months. Malo recalls a remote Indigenous village in the hills of Adamawa state in Nigeria’s northeast, where locals have preserved their way of life for hundreds of years and are wary of outsiders. Her team had almost given up trying to liaise with reluctant male community leaders and decided to try reaching out to the women. The women, it turned out, were fascinated by the technology and how it could help them, especially at night — to fetch water from streams, to use the bathroom, and to keep their children safe from snakes. “We find that if we convince them, they’re able to go and convince their husbands,” Malo says.
The Mbiabet community took less convincing. Residents were drawn to the promise of cheap, reliable electricity and its potential to boost local businesses.
Like many other mini-grids, the one in Mbiabet benefited from a small grant, this one from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on renewable energy adoption. The funds allowed residents to retain 20 percent ownership of the mini-grid and reduced upfront costs for Prado Power, which built the panels with the help of local laborers.
On a day in late September, it’s a sunny afternoon, though
