Nigerians press for solar jobs and electricity, with little success

In sun-drenched Nigeria, 14 new solar farms were supposed to jumpstart a meager solar industry and generate huge amounts of power, about one-fifth as much as the country’s entire electric grid offers on a good day.

“We were very excited because we were pioneers,” said Najim Animashaun, managing director of Nova Solar Power, who was working on one of the projects in 2016.

But that ambition collapsed when Nigeria’s government wouldn’t provide critical guarantees to developers. It’s not that demand is low for clean power — the smallest solar systems for homes have exploded in popularity and created jobs — but big developers haven’t been able to overcome Nigeria’s reputation as a risky place to do business.

It’s a problem across sub-Saharan Africa, where 83% of the people in the world who lack electricity live. Despite tremendous solar potential, very little of it has been installed.

“Many of your countries face sky-high borrowing costs, runaway debt, and inadequate climate finance and investment,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, at a panel on Africa’s green transition at this year’s global climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The result, he said, is: “your clean energy revolution held back.”

Nigeria may be the problem’s epicenter. More Nigerians live without electricity than citizens of any other country. Their numbers have even grown compared to a decade ago: Africa’s most populous country, with more than 220 million people, grew faster than its power sector expanded. Even those connected to the grid live with frequent outages. Millions are forced to rely on wood for cooking and noxious, noisy diesel generators for sporadic electricity.

At the climate talks in Baku, at least $300 billion annually was pledged to help developing countries like Nigeria transition away from fossil fuels and cope with a warmer world and its more extreme weather. It was blasted by many developing nations as far too little.

Having enough funds will be vital for Nigeria, which is facing an enormously challenging energy transition. It is an oil state, a major petroleum exporter that runs its government largely on oil revenue. It burns natural gas for most of its electricity. It is trying to simultaneously expand its economy to pull tens of millions of people out of poverty and transition to net-zero by 2060. To do so, there will need to be a flood of new renewable projects like solar and hydropower.

Animashaun of Nova Solar Power said in the years before the 14 solar projects were announced, Nigeria opened its electric sector to attract more private investment and made it easier for new producers to sell power. There was strong investor backing, too. He was optimistic.

“There was a proliferation of projects and that proliferation of projects created competition among ourselves,” he said. Everybody wanted to be first to finish.

But Nigeria has high interest rates and is considered a financially problematic place to do business and the deal never closed. As the solar industry matured and prices dropped, the government tried to get out of an agreement to pay what it viewed as too high a price for solar power. Developers couldn’t get the guarantees they wanted from officials and international development banks. Animashaun said he knew the deal was in serious jeopardy when the government proposed a deal in local currency instead of dollars.

“The currency has lost 90% of its value since I started this project,” he said. “So, Nigeria isn’t really bankable.”

A wholly inadequate grid leads to demand for any electricity at all

With the Nigerian grid providing only a fraction of the electricity that people need, some employ a solar solution that provides at least some power. Micro-solar systems that power only lights and perhaps charge a cell phone tripled from 2016 to 2023, according to GOGLA, an off-grid energy industry association. Sales of small rooftop systems that can run some appliances increased even more, although sales did fall off some when a subsidy program ended this year.

Sun King is a major seller of these small devices that can replace dirty and expensive kerosene lamps or diesel generators.

The micro-solar industry also requires a big workforce at a time when Nigeria’s young population needs jobs. Olamide Ayo-Ogunlade is the human resources lead for West and Central Africa at Sun King. When she started four years ago, the company had 19 stores in the country, now it has 90. More than 8,000 salespeople or “energy officers” in Nigeria sell the products, install them in homes, service them and collect customer debts.

“Most of the time we find that energy officers start off as customers,” she said. “They buy the product themselves, see how fantastic it is, then they are exposed to the opportunity to be an entrepreneur in the energy space.”

They’ll knock on doors and show up at markets, churches and mosques in new areas to make sales. Energy officers are trained, in person and online, on the company and its products and they work with mentors.

That attention to training matters. Across the region, some question solar’s reliability, according to Siré Diallo, an energy and climate finance expert with the United Nations Development Programme.

“Many of the installations that are being done, the consumers were not satisfied because either it was poor installation, or the equipment itself was of low quality,” he said.

It has gotten better in recent years, he said, but training programs need to grow.

There’s certainly demand for jobs, said Akin Olukiran, CEO of ABG-CAPS Clean Energy Generation, which installs solar systems for businesses.

“I get on average about 10, maybe 20 applications per day, unsolicited,” he said, adding many applicants have tremendous potential and he tries to help them find opportunities, but “the jobs are not there.”

Alberto Rodríguez Gómez, manager in the Africa energy program at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, says a planned changeover at the the largest market in Nigeria’s capital city illustrates one solution that produces reliable electricity, improvements in air quality, plus employment. Solar panels paired with batteries will keep the market running on its own minigrid even during common blackouts.

Up until now, sellers labouring in cramped stalls have no alternative but to turn on diesel generators during frequent outages.

“I struggle because the air is thick, the air is nasty, it is also very noisy so it is also really hard to just maintain a conversation,” Gomez said of the market when the generators run. A future with solar at the market “is like going from hell to heaven.”

A new $750 million program was approved by the World Bank last year to improve electricity access to 17.5 million Nigerians by supporting projects like microgrids or small home solar systems. Much more is needed.

Animashaun believes that Nigeria is approaching a “come to Jesus moment” on energy — there’s pressure on the government to deliver at a time when living costs are rising.

“If you want to avoid social unrest, you have to do something,” he said.