Nigeria has emerged as sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing market for small-scale solar systems, but weak investment in utility-scale renewable energy projects is preventing the country from translating the boom into large-scale improvements in electricity supply.
These are the central findings of a new report published by BloombergNEF (BNEF) on Wednesday. The report, titled “Sub-Saharan Africa Renewable Energy Market Outlook”, projects that Nigeria will dominate the region’s small-scale solar additions through 2035, while South Africa will remain the continent’s leader in utility-scale renewable energy deployment.
The findings underscore the contrasting paths African countries are taking in the energy transition, with Nigeria’s growth driven largely by households and businesses abandoning the unreliable national grid in favour of rooftop solar and battery systems.
The report drew its findings after profiling 16 sub-Saharan African markets, selected based on BNEF’s bottom-up view of utility-scale project pipelines and import data to estimate small-scale demand.
It said of the region’s five largest clean energy technology importers since 2025 – South Africa, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zambia and Kenya – only South Africa, DRC and Zambia have meaningful utility-scale project pipelines.
