Africa’s adoption of solar panels as an electricity source will rise 45% this year as the use of the clean power technology broadens across the continent, Ember projects.
The climate research company, basing its estimates on Chinese exports of solar panels to Africa in the year to June, forecasts that a record 17 gigawatts of solar power will be installed across the continent in 2026.
Notably, South Africa’s role as the dominant importer will shrink as installations accelerate in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Still, Ember said in a report published Thursday, three-quarters of the growth is in the form of distributed solar, primarily panels installed on rooftops, which is hard to track and makes it difficult for governments to plan their own grid expansions.
“Across Africa, distributed energy resources are rapidly expanding and in many cases overtaking grid capacity,” Joel Nana, a research director at African Tech Futures Lab, said in the report.
“This transition is chaotic and disruptive and far from the orderly model planned in national strategies.”
Falling costs are driving rapid adoption of solar power in Africa, where about 563 million people, or more than four-fifths of the global total, lack access to electricity.
The World Bank and African Development Bank are leading a push to bring power to 300 million people by 2030.
The $2.4 billion spent across Africa on panels in the year through June is equivalent to what it would have traditionally cost to run diesel generators for three months, Ember said.
While South Africa, which has the continent’s largest utility-scale solar industry, accounted for 52% of imports from China in 2023, that proportion fell to 20% in the latest period.
Even though Ember estimates that 36 of Africa’s 54 countries will install record amounts of solar in 2026, South Africa will remain the biggest buyer with 3.3 gigawatts expected to be added.
