South Africa and Nigeria together account for over 40 percent of that expansion, and solar makes up more than 80 percent of new capacity.\n<\/p>\n
Spread over six years, the regional total works out to roughly 20 GW of additions a year by my arithmetic. That is many times the 1 GW Nigeria could assemble annually by 2031, which helps explain why imports will keep dominating.\n<\/p>\n
The agency raised its forecast for the region by 54 percent from a year earlier. The upgrade rests almost entirely on rooftop and off-grid systems. Distributed solar was revised up by 42 GW, \u201creflecting faster consumer-led deployment and improved accounting of historically underestimated distributed capacity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, policy changes are improving the\u00a0economics.<\/p>\n
\u201cFuel subsidy removal, mini-grid regulation and the introduction of net billing improve project economics,\u201d the report said.\n<\/p>\n
The IEA noted the growth in the region is driven \u201cless by centralised procurement than by consumers seeking more reliable and affordable electricity amid weak grid reliability, high tariffs, rising diesel generation costs and falling solar PV and battery prices.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Nigeria is expanding assembly while the global industry is under strain. The IEA said more than 90 percent of major Chinese solar manufacturers reported losses, and over 70 companies have filed for bankruptcy or liquidation since 2024. Global average module prices stayed near $0.12 a watt, \u201cstill less than half the pre-2023 levels,\u201d even after rising 10 percent to 30 percent this year.\n<\/p>\n
Solar supply chains \u201cremain highly concentrated in China at every stage, from polysilicon to modules,\u201d the report said. It expects India to be the only other country able to make every major component at scale by 2031. Nigeria isn\u2019t on that list.\n<\/p>\n
The IEA noted that cell and module plants outside China cost less to build than polysilicon or wafer facilities, and that new entrants \u201cneed clear competitive advantages in their target markets, such as technological differentiation, policy support, local-content advantages or strong domestic demand.\u201d Of those, domestic demand is the one Nigeria arguably has. The others are less clear.<\/p>\n
Read also:\u00a0Nigeria bets on solar mini-grids to unlock rural businesses, jobs<\/a><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n The IEA said regional deployment remains \u201cwell below the substantial potential.\u201d It named \u201cgrid capacity constraints and transmission bottlenecks\u201d as the largest barriers to utility-scale projects, particularly in Nigeria and South Africa. \u201cGovernment utility offtaker risk, weak revenue collection, and procurement uncertainty continues to undermine project bankability,\u201d it added.\n<\/p>\n Distributed solar faces its own obstacles. The report cited \u201climited local-currency financing access, foreign exchange volatility and import policy uncertainty.\u201d Those are significant risks for any assembler that buys imported cells and components priced in dollars.\n<\/p>\n In an accelerated case, the IEA said regional renewable additions could be 46 percent higher than in its main forecast. For Nigeria, that scenario \u201cassumes that grid constraints and financing or bankability barriers are resolved, allowing the full utility-scale PV pipeline to come online.\u201d The report also pointed to access to local-currency financing and continued development of domestic manufacturing as factors that could strengthen distributed solar growth.\n<\/p>\n Much of the demand for panels is happening outside official statistics. The IEA estimated that sub-Saharan Africa will install \u201cmore than 21 GW\u201d of off-grid solar between 2026 and 2031, \u201cequivalent to the region\u2019s total installed capacity today.\u201d Imports of Chinese panels into Africa rose sharply in March, April and May after the Middle East conflict began, \u201cunderscoring growing reliance on decentralised solar solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Per-capita solar generation in Nigeria and eight other sub-Saharan countries starts at \u201cjust tens of kilowatt hours\u201d and rises only modestly through 2031, the report said, leaving it \u201cat only a small fraction of the global average.\u201d The IEA called that gap \u201cone of the largest untapped opportunities in the global energy transition,\u201d provided that investment, financing and grid challenges are addressed.<\/p>\n Source: <\/p>\n Nigeria is on course to at least double its capacity to assemble solar panels by 2031, according to the International Energy Agency. But the Paris-based agency cautioned that the expansion… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Off-Grid Boom<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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