April 10, 2018

Currently 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. Thus, Africa is ideal for setting up solar power projects of mini-grid photovoltaics (PV) panels and grid scale storage to generate electricity for 1.2 billion inhabitants.

The latest analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reports an 800MW solar energy investment in the first quarter of 2018 (Q1) in Noor Midelt, Morocco. The project adopts a mix of PV panels and solar thermal systems with storage, estimated cost at $2.4 billion and funded by Development banks including KfW of Germany and the European Investment Bank.

The World Bank’s Scaling Solar reported also has solar projects in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Senegal and Zambia.
Besides, Energise Africa, a joint investment platform from UK-based Ethex and Dutch-based Lendahand, provides loans to businesses that sell small solar systems to families in Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Basically, a family owns its solar system after making 12 to 24 monthly payments.
Having a solar system in the family improves people’s lives greatly in many ways, in particular, to be able to read at night and have refrigerators to store food and drinks.