Africa’s cumulative PV installations reached 19.2GW in 2024, increasing by 2.5GW on 2023 levels.
The Africa Solar Africa Solar Outlook 2025, published by trade body AFSIA Solar, said the continent recorded steady growth in 2024, notching up the third consecutive year of more than 2GW of capacity additions.
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AFSIA’s market outlook report only tracks projects in the utility-scale, commercial and industrial (C&I) and mini-grid segments. According to the report, the utility and C&I segments accounted for the lion’s share of 2024 additions, at 1.78GW and 675MW respectively. Although the report does not cover the residential market, AFSIA estimated residential installations could represent 10-20% additional capacity
As in previous years, Africa’s PV market activity in 2024 was heavily dominated by two countries, South Africa and Egypt, which saw 1.2GW and 707MW of new additions, respectively. After these two market leaders were Zambia, with 74.8MW; Nigeria, with 63.5MW; and Angola, with 53.8MW.
AFSIA said the continent’s share of global PV installations in 2024 was the lowest since 2013, at just 0.5%. Such a low level of activity was “not doing justice to the African solar potential nor the need for new power generation across the continent”, AFSIA said,
But on a more positive note, the report said 2024 had seen 40GW of new project proposals coming forward, representing a 21% increase in the continent’s project pipeline compared to 2023.
“While risk and uncertainty may always affect plans and announcements negatively, the pipeline for solar in Africa is dense and the African solar future remains promising,” AFSIA noted.
A storage ‘boom’
Also significant in 2024 was what AFSIA described as a “boom” in energy storage, with cumulative capacity experiencing more than a tenfold increase from 150MWh in 2023 to 1,641MWh in 2024.
AFSIA said it had identified around 18GWh of projects under development across Africa, driven by sharply decreasing prices for stationary storage solutions.
In its latest outlook report, AFSIA said it had revised downward capacity figures presented in the past two outlook reports based on new information on the status of projects previously recorded as ‘operational’. For example, last year’s estimate of 3.7GW of new capacity additions has now been downgraded to around 2.6GW based on new data that had come to light, AFSIA said.
