Solar energy in sub-Saharan Africa

Latest Articles

06/03/2026
George Kamau

A small room filled with solar panels and wiring diagrams ends up raising a much larger question about how Kenyans plan to power everyday life

Solar power is taking off in Malawi: but poor households need financial help to make it work for them

02/03/2026
Pam Jagger, Charles B.L. Jumbe, Congyi Dai, Ryan McCord and Thabbie Chilongo
Article

Access to electricity is widely seen as a cornerstone of sustainable development. It improves quality of life, enables household income generation, and raises living standards. Despite this, 760 million people around the world live without it.

The Surprising Link Between Off-Grid Solar Energy and Global Lead Poisoning

28/02/2026
Rachel Bonnifield and Caroline Mallory
Article

Solar energy is a central plank of the green energy revolution, with widespread adoption in high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) alike. In LMICs, these technologies—and off-grid solar systems, in particular—are favored by individuals and development partners for their apparent win-win-win.

The False Choice in African Energy Access: Why the Sector Must Balance the Needs of Households and Businesses — And How it Can Electrify Both

24/02/2026
Alba Topulli and Todd Moss
Article

Energy is essential to Africa’s development, but progress has stalled over a false choice: Should the continent prioritize the basic solar home systems that move households up the energy ladder — or should it invest in making electricity cheaper and more reliable for businesses to power job creation and economic growth?

‘Clean Energy for People and Planet’ must start with African realities

18/02/2026
Ekeminiabasi Eyita-Okon
Article

For Africa, the clean energy agenda cannot be framed as a matter of global urgency translated into continental compliance. It must be ‘glocalised’, by adapting to local political economies, governance realities, historical trajectories of (under) development, and importantly, a consideration of indigenous energy systems.

South Africans are leaving the electricity network – but are solar mini-grids a fair solution?

16/02/2026
Joanna Watterson, University of Cambridge
Article

South Africa’s electricity system is changing. After years of blackouts until 2024, the state-owned energy company Eskom is being unbundled into smaller companies, and the sector is increasingly open to private investment.

Connecting home solar and electric vehicle batteries to the grid could boost South Africa’s clean energy and strengthen the electricity system

13/02/2026
David Richard Walwyn, University of Pretoria
Article

South Africa has committed to reaching phasing out human-caused carbon pollution by 2050. To get there, it needs to push as much renewable energy as possible into the national grid.

Productive Use Has Challenges: What’s Holding the Sector Back — And How Companies and Investors Should Respond

09/02/2026
Daniel Waldron, Duda Slawek, Chris Emmott and Kristi Chon
Article

Across Africa, renewable energy is powering more homes than ever, but it hasn’t yet powered prosperity. For smallholder farmers, productive-use technologies such as solar irrigation, cold storage and agro-processing can have a transformative impact.

Embrace Early Field Testing – Or Lose the Clean Tech Race

03/02/2026
Moses M. Nyakoyo
Article

In the fast-evolving world of clean technology, innovation isn’t just about cutting-edge designs or lab-perfected prototypes. It’s about creating products that truly work in the real world, and that starts with involving end users from the get-go.