Photos by Kola Suleimon. Video by Yasmine Canga-Valles
Working as a nurse in her rural village in Nigeria, Andat Datau faced more than her share of challenges. But delivering torch babies has always been difficult.
Off the grid for years, Sabon Gida’s village relied on diesel generators or light bulbs, and like millions of other Africans, Datau often had no light at all.
But a year ago, her village of Datau in north-central Nasarawa State was connected to a solar mini-grid that supplied half of her community’s households and most businesses with near-constant electricity.
Sabon Gida now has more light at times than Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital, where many draw about half a day’s power — sometimes much less — from the erratic grid.
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Mini-grids — the small power plants that typically power rural communities — aren’t new. However, a decade of falling solar technology costs has spurred the growth of clean energy mini-grids, with rural Africa poised to benefit the most.
“It was stressful holding torchlight processions,” Datau told AFP at her clinic.
“Even injecting without electric light would be difficult for us.”
Nearly 600 million Africans live without access to electricity, and in Nigeria alone that number is 90 million — about 40 percent of the population in the continent’s most populous nation.
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And while Africa may have the most solar power generation potential, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the continent lags behind in terms of installed capacity.
A tripling of renewable energy, including solar, will be on the agenda at next month’s COP28 climate talks in Dubai.
Africa is responsible for the least amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but is often affected the most, and is also under pressure to avoid fossil-based development.
Solar mini-grids are not a low-scale solution: the World Bank and ILO see them as one of the most sustainable ways to get fossil-free access to electricity for rural sub-Saharan Africa.
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In a report this year, the bank said solar mini-grid use had expanded from just 500 installed in 2010 to more than 3,000 installed now. Another 9,000 appear online within a few years.
But scaling up solar power in Africa faces huge challenges, including securing investors wary of its sustainability, inflationary pressures on equipment, better government financing and clear policies to promote its use.
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To meet the sustainable development goals of increasing power to 380 million in Africa by 2030, 160,000 mini-grids are needed. The current pace sees only 12,000 new grids by then, according to the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program.
But already for Sabon Gida — a rice-farming community an hour from the Nasarawa state capital, Lafia — a year of solar power has brought changes beyond the light at Datau’s small clinic.
Sabon Gida is a community in a private-public initiative involving the World Bank and US-based mini-grid builder Husk Power Systems with the country’s Rural Electrification Agency.
“Light… it was only for the rich before, they were the ones who used power generators in their homes,” said Dauda Yakubu, a traditional leader of the Sabon Gida community.
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Solar power is now the cheapest energy source for utility-scale electricity — an attractive proposition for Africa where poor investment and poorly maintained power grids often mean limited energy.
The World Bank says Nigeria’s market-driven approach to solar mini-grids has already helped online more than 100 projects, while Ethiopia and Zambia have approved new regulations to attract private investment.
Kenya also introduced favorable regulations for a public-private initiative for 150 mini-grids, the bank said.
“Solar mini-grids are an integral part of Nigeria’s energy transition plan,” said Abba Aliya at the Nigerian Electricity Authority.
“The government sees this model as the most effective means of rapidly increasing access to electricity.”
Solar energy in Africa still needs more work, especially financing and creating profitable models. States often lack funds for large-scale projects, while small-scale projects are not viable for the private sector, said Abel Gaiya, a researcher at the Abuja-based think tank Clean Technology Hub.
However, combining new technology such as electric transport and green hydrogen with solar mini-grids could make the projects more attractive as well as efforts to “cluster” mini-grid investments, he said.
“If you take mini-grids out of the equation, you’re left with the problem of extending national grids that aren’t available to so many communities. So mini-grids are necessary,” he said.
Husk, which also works in India and other African nations, operates 12 networks in Nigeria but plans another 60 by the end of next year.
An hour from Lafia along an unpaved dirt road, Igbabo village in Nasarawa joined the program two years ago. Now, approximately 350 households and businesses have access to Husk Power’s 172-panel solar installation.
His diesel generator sitting quietly in his roadside workshop, welder Jesse Eneh connects his tools to the solar grid.
Where he used to spend nearly 30,000 naira ($30) a week on diesel, he now pays the same price a month as a business for solar grid access.
Private households pay an average of 2,500 naira per month for electricity. Businesses pay an average of 10,000 naira per month, although more energy-intensive tasks such as gluing racks increase.
Nearby, Husk Power has an electric motorcycle pilot project, part of its integrated approach to bring power and equipment to rural communities.
John Buhari is still offering the same price in his phone charging business but now he is making more profit because he is no longer paying to power his generator.
In Sabon Gida, no one could be happier with solar power than Shagari Abari, owner of a screening salon where locals gather on concrete benches to watch football and movies.
“Most of the time with my generator, there are failures and breakdowns during the games and the crowds would start screaming at me,” he said.
“But with solar it’s stable and it’s cheaper.”