PAYNE INSTITUTE COMMENTARY SERIES: COMMENTARY

By Macdonald Amoah and Morgan Bazilian

May 29, 2026

Between June 2023 and June 2025, sub-Saharan Africa’s solar panel imports from China nearly tripled outside South Africa, rising from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW. Twenty countries set individual import records. Twenty-five imported at least 100 MW each, up from fifteen a year earlier. Yet Chinese customs data shows 58.1 GW of panels shipped to the continent since 2017, while the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) puts operational installed capacity at just 23.4 GW (AFSIA, 2026; Ember, 2025). That apparent gap of roughly 35 GW is itself a signal of how poorly understood this transition remains. AFSIA’s own 2026 Outlook, using a top-down methodology incorporating Chinese export data, estimates actual installed capacity could be as high as 63.9 GW across the continent: far more panels have likely been installed than project databases have captured, rather than simply sitting in warehouses (AFSIA, 2026).

This essay takes the trade data as its starting point and works outward. What is driving the import surge? Which countries are absorbing the volume, and why? And as cheap Chinese panels flood the continent, what would it take for African countries to capture manufacturing value rather than remain terminal consumers of someone else’s industrial overcapacity?

1. The Chinese Supply Crisis and Its Consequences for Africa

The proximate cause of the surge is one of the most dramatic episodes of industrial overcapacity in modern economic history. Chinese solar manufacturers, backed by state-directed credit and provincial land subsidies, expanded polysilicon capacity fourfold between 2022 and 2024. Module prices collapsed from roughly $0.40 per watt in 2019 to a range of $0.25–$0.32 per watt during the 2021 post-pandemic supply crunch—with the precise figure varying by module type and market—then cratered to $0.07–$0.09 by 2024–25 (Wood Mackenzie, 2025; Rystad Energy, cited in CNBC, 2021; US EIA, 2020).

The financial damage inside China was staggering. Across the broader solar value chain, Chinese firms reported approximately $60 billion in losses in 2024, with capacity utilization in polysilicon and module segments falling to 40–50 percent (Reuters, 2025; CSIS, 2026). Over 40 smaller solar firms delisted, entered bankruptcy, or were acquired between 2024 and early 2025 (Reuters, 2025; CPIA data cited in TrendForce, 2025). China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) acknowledged “irrational competition” and raised minimum capital ratios for new solar projects from 20 to 30 percent in November 2024 (pv-tech, 2024; CSIS, 2026).

Beijing eventually intervened more forcefully. New guidelines restricted capacity expansion and mandated output cuts, reducing utilization rates to 55-70 percent. Polysilicon prices rebounded 48 percent in September 2025 alone. Glass manufacturers including Xinyi Solar and Flat Glass announced 30 percent production cuts. The consequence for Africa: the window of modules priced at $0.07-$0.09 per watt was time-limited. Wood Mackenzie projects prices rising through 2026 as the market rebalances; based on the 9 percent Q4 2025 increase and continued policy tightening, a stabilisation range of approximately $0.12–$0.15 per watt by mid-2026 is broadly consistent with analyst projections, though the precise figure is subject to revision (Wood Mackenzie, 2025).

A displacement effect compounded the price collapse. As the European Union (EU), the United States, and India erected trade barriers, Chinese exporters redirected volumes toward markets with no such restrictions. India imposed anti-dumping duties of 23-30 percent on Chinese solar cells and modules in late 2025, on top of existing customs duties of 20 percent (InfoLink Consulting, 2025). Africa, with limited domestic manufacturing and almost no trade defense infrastructure, absorbed a significant share of the displaced volume. The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) explicitly identified Africa as a priority export market in its 2024 strategic communications. This was not incidental; it reflected a deliberate commercial strategy by manufacturers facing margin compression at home.

The result is a structural dependency risk that African policymakers have begun to acknowledge. The panel prices powering today’s solar economics are products of a crisis in China’s manufacturing sector, not stable market conditions. When Chinese capacity rationalization runs its course and Western trade barriers redirect more export pressure elsewhere, African consumers and project developers will face a materially different price environment. Whether African countries can develop any domestic manufacturing capacity before that window closes is therefore more urgent than the headline import numbers suggest.

2. Africa is Not a Country

Nigeria: Diesel Displacement at Scale

Nigeria presents the most economically compelling case for solar adoption in sub-Saharan Africa. Wood Mackenzie estimated in 2022 that the country operates approximately 28 GW of distributed diesel generator capacity across all sizes—from large industrial plants to small household units—more than its total on-grid power plant capacity. This estimate is broadly consistent with other analysis suggesting Nigerian backup diesel capacity exceeds grid capacity by around 60 percent, though precise figures vary depending on whether residential micro-generators are included (Wood Mackenzie, 2022; GSMA, 2024). For sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa, the estimate was roughly $20 billion spent annually on generator fuel, equivalent to about 80 percent of grid electricity spending, even though generators supplied only 7 percent of total electricity (Wood Mackenzie, 2022, cited in Ember, 2025).

Two policy shocks in 2023 transformed the economics. President Tinubu’s removal of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy in May 2023 roughly doubled diesel prices overnight, and subsequent naira devaluation compounded dollar-denominated import costs. A litre of diesel that cost 750 naira in early 2023 was trading above 1,600 naira by mid-2024 (BusinessDay, 2026). Meanwhile, the dollar-price collapse of panels outpaced naira weakness: the Nigeria Renewable Energy Association reports that commercial rooftop solar installation costs fell roughly 35 percent in naira terms between 2022 and 2025 (BusinessDay, 2026). Ember estimates payback on a panel alone at approximately six months of diesel savings; full-system payback including inverter, battery, and installation runs between 18 and 36 months (Ember, 2025).

Nigeria surpassed Egypt as Africa’s second-largest solar importer in the twelve months to June 2025, bringing in 1,721 MW behind only South Africa’s 3,784 MW (Ember, 2025). The market is valued at over $600 million in annual module and accessories sales, with projected growth of 15-20 percent annually (Ecofin Agency, 2025). Nearly all demand is concentrated in off-grid and commercial-and-industrial systems rather than utility-scale projects.

The manufacturing question is live and contested. Nigeria’s domestic solar manufacturing capacity grew from 110 MW to around 600 MW between 2023 and 2025, and a new 1 GW facility backed by government support is under development (Ecofin Agency, 2025). When the government floated an outright import ban in early 2025, it created immediate market disruption: first-quarter panel imports fell 89 percent (SBM Intelligence, 2025). PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) argued publicly against an abrupt ban, warning it could “leave millions in the dark” and recommending a phased three-to-five-year transition combining quotas, tariffs, and procurement anchors (PwC Nigeria, 2025, cited in Ecofin Agency, 2025). The tension between protecting nascent domestic manufacturing and keeping panels affordable enough to sustain the off-grid boom is real and unresolved.

South Africa: The Most Advanced Industrial Policy

South Africa is the only sub-Saharan country with both substantial installed utility solar capacity and a serious domestic manufacturing sector. Its policy trajectory since 2024 is the most instructive case study of the manufacturing-versus-deployment tension.

Installed renewable capacity exceeded 15 GW by 2025, with solar photovoltaic (PV) reaching approximately 10.2 GW by end-2025 after adding 1.6 GW during the year, and wind at 6.2 GW (SAPVIA, cited in pv magazine, 2026; BDO, 2025). The Northern Cape hosts nearly 60 percent of installed solar. South Africa added 2.6 GW of solar in 2023, a record, followed by 1.1 GW in 2024 as load-shedding eased and market conditions tightened, before rebounding to 1.6 GW in 2025 (SAPVIA, cited in pv magazine, 2026).

The country introduced a 10 percent import tariff on crystalline silicon PV modules in June 2024, following an application by ARTSolar, one of only two remaining domestic producers. Four manufacturers had ceased local production between 2020 and 2024, citing the impossibility of competing with Chinese-priced modules (International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa [ITAC], 2024). ITAC acknowledged the structural difficulty: high local costs and market flooding by low-priced imports had destroyed the economics of domestic production.

South Africa’s Cabinet approved the South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM) in March 2025 after a three-year development process (Department of Mineral Resources and Energy [DMRE], 2025). SAREM sets localization targets of 50 percent for solar, 47 percent for wind, and 60 percent for battery storage by 2030, and targets deployment of at least 3 GW of new renewables annually, rising to 5 GW. The government calculates that component manufacturing becomes economically viable at 1 GW or more of sustained annual domestic demand, a threshold South Africa can plausibly reach (DMRE, 2025). The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) is reviewing additional tariff increases across the renewable energy value chain. South Africa already exports lithium-ion batteries to African neighbors: over 90 percent of its battery exports between 2020 and 2022, totaling $50 million in 2022, went to Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe (DMRE, 2025).

The critics of tariff-led industrialization have a point the South African experience partly validates. Modern solar module assembly is highly automated; the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate that in markets outside China—where manufacturing is heavily concentrated—deployment and installation account for the dominant share of solar PV employment, with manufacturing contributing a smaller proportion; in Europe specifically, where the split has been disaggregated most precisely, deployment and installation together account for approximately 86 percent of solar jobs, operations and maintenance for a further 7.7 percent, and manufacturing for under 5 percent (IRENA and ILO, 2026). Globally, China’s 4.2 million manufacturing jobs mean the overall manufacturing share is higher, but for African countries building a solar sector without existing manufacturing infrastructure, the deployment-heavy employment profile of non-manufacturing markets is the more relevant benchmark. The employment density of panel manufacturing specifically is weaker than for installation, maintenance, and balance-of-system equipment, a pattern consistent with the highly automated production lines that characterize modern module assembly (SEforAll, 2023). The stronger case for South Africa’s localization strategy lies in batteries, wind components, and the processing of its abundant mineral resources rather than in panel manufacturing per se (DMRE, 2025).

Zambia: Climate Shock as Solar Catalyst

Zambia’s solar import surge has a distinct driver: the 2023-2024 El Niño drought, which the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described as the worst to hit Southern Africa in 40 years (WHO/OCHA, 2024). Hydropower accounts for approximately 83 percent of Zambia’s 2,800 MW installed capacity, and the drought reduced Lake Kariba’s usable water storage to 7.4 percent by early 2024 (Afrobarometer, 2024). Load shedding reached 21 hours per day in parts of the country (Parliament of Zambia, 2024, cited in Afrobarometer, 2024).

Zambia’s response combined emergency procurement and structural reform. The government removed value-added tax (VAT) and import duties on solar panels and fast-tracked agreements with independent power producers (IPPs) (Afrobarometer, 2024). The 100 MW Chisamba Solar Power Plant, constructed in seven months, was commissioned in June 2025 as the first phase of a planned 1,000 MW solar program. Solar panel imports grew eightfold year-over-year to 424 MW in the twelve months to June 2025 (Ember, 2025).

Zambia’s significance extends beyond deployment. The country holds large copper reserves and is increasing production toward an ambitious government target of 3 million tonnes annually by 2031, up from around 795,000 tonnes in 2021—a target that will require substantial infrastructure investment and sustained political will to achieve (World Bank, 2025). Together with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) cobalt, Zambia has the inputs to anchor a regional battery manufacturing complex. But the 2024 drought that drove the solar import surge also illustrated how fragile the energy supply enabling any such processing remains.

Kenya: The Off-Grid Pioneer

Kenya has the highest share of households accessing electricity through solar of any African country, with roughly one in five Kenyans relying on off-grid connections and more than 3 million households depending on off-grid solar products (International Energy Agency [IEA], 2024). The country imported 495 MW of solar panels in the twelve months to June 2025, up from 200 MW in 2021, a 147 percent increase (Ember, 2025).

Kenya’s market is notable for the maturity of its pay-as-you-go financing ecosystem, which has allowed household adoption at income levels where upfront purchase would be unaffordable. More significant for the manufacturing argument: Ember’s February 2026 data showed Kenya importing more than 1.4 GW of solar cells and wafers in a single month, part of a broader trend in which several African countries shifted from purchasing finished panels to importing upstream components for local assembly (Ember, 2026). That shift, from finished-product consumer to assembler, is the first concrete trade evidence that value chain migration is underway.

Ethiopia: The Tariff Arbitrage Node

Ethiopia’s solar panel imports grew nearly fourfold in the twelve months to June 2025 (Ember, 2025), but the more consequential development is the country’s rapid emergence as a manufacturing node in the global solar supply chain. Several firms with links to the global solar supply chain have committed over $170 million to solar cell manufacturing in Ethiopia. Origin Solar—backed by Singapore- and Seychelles-registered entities and using Canadian Solar technology—is operating a 4.2 GW TOPCon solar cell production line in Hawassa with a total investment of $55 million (FSX Business, 2026; China Global South Project, 2025). TOYO Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: TOYO), a Japanese solar manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, has built a 2 GW cell plant at Hawassa, since expanded to 4 GW, with an initial investment of $60 million and a further $47 million for the expansion (TOYO, 2024; PV Tech, 2025). Hainan Drinda New Energy Technology, a Chinese firm, is developing a separate facility. In a larger-scale commitment, Ming Yang Smart Energy Group secured an investment licence from the Ethiopian Investment Commission for a $14.1 billion clean energy and industrial development project including 2.8 GW of solar PV (PV Tech, 2026).

These investments are driven less by Ethiopian domestic demand than by tariff arbitrage: Chinese-linked manufacturers are using Ethiopian production to access the U.S. market, where tariffs on Chinese solar products reached 60 percent in 2025. The strategy’s vulnerability became apparent in May 2026 when U.S. manufacturers including First Solar and Qcells filed a trade dispute alleging that Ethiopian production was being used to circumvent tariffs on Chinese components, with imports of Ethiopian solar products rising from zero through June 2025 to $300 million by December (Bloomberg, 2026). Whether Ethiopia’s manufacturing base survives a potential U.S. anti-circumvention ruling will test whether these facilities can pivot toward African and other markets or whether they were always export platforms with limited domestic spillover.

3. The Manufacturing Window: Comparative Advantage and Its Limits

China produces approximately 80 percent of global solar panels and dominates every segment of the supply chain from polysilicon through wafers, cells, and modules (Ember, 2025). Competing with Chinese manufacturers on module cost at current overcapacity-distorted prices is implausible for African producers in the near term. The more realistic entry points are assembly of imported cells into finished modules, production of balance-of-system components where transport costs create natural protection, and manufacture of batteries and storage systems where the logistics of heavy components favor proximity to market.

A significant data point emerged in late 2025: for the first time, Africa imported more solar cells and wafers than finished panels in volume terms, confirmed by Ember’s February 2026 tracking data. Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia each imported more than 1 GW of cells and wafers in February 2026 alone. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s (UNIDO) representative for Africa, Divyam Nagpal, told the Reynolds Center that local conglomerates and state-owned enterprises were showing new interest in solar manufacturing investment (Ember, 2026). This is a preliminary and potentially reversible shift, but it is the first concrete trade data suggesting that African countries are beginning to capture assembly value rather than importing entirely finished products.

The Africa Renewable Energy Manufacturing Initiative (AREMI), launched by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) in January 2023, has identified ten countries with medium or high feasibility to localize solar PV or battery storage manufacturing, with active focus on Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa (SEforAll, 2023).

The lessons from industrial policy elsewhere are instructive. India’s Production Linked Incentive scheme created module capacity but resulted in overcapacity combined with insufficient cell production: Indian manufacturers must still import large quantities of Chinese cells (InfoLink Consulting, 2025). Brazil’s wind industry built competitive domestic manufacturing by combining long-term demand signals through public procurement with local content requirements and preferential development bank financing. South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) produced significant investment but limited localization because earlier procurement rounds did not rigorously enforce local content commitments (DMRE, 2025). SAREM attempts to address this by tying localization targets to the new procurement rounds.

The fundamental tension in trade policy design is that tariffs protecting domestic manufacturers raise panel costs for consumers and slow distributed solar adoption that is generating real welfare gains (SEforAll, 2023). Sequencing matters. Nigeria’s abrupt discussion of an import ban illustrated the risks of moving faster than domestic supply capacity. South Africa’s graduated approach, starting with 10 percent on finished modules while maintaining rebate provisions for cell imports needed by local assemblers, is more defensible, though critics argue it primarily burdens downstream installers without creating a viable competitive manufacturing base (ITAC, 2024).

4. The Measurement Problem

Pakistan provides an instructive benchmark for thinking about how much of Africa’s solar transition is invisible to conventional statistics. In 2024, Pakistan imported approximately 16–17 GW of solar panels while only around 4–5 GW was registered under the government’s net metering scheme by early 2025 (Renewables First, 2025; pv magazine, 2025); the remainder—estimated at 19 GW or more in off-grid and non-net-metered installations—was consumed for self-supply and never appeared in official data (TransitionZero, 2026). By the time the scale of Pakistan’s transition was fully understood, it had already reshaped the country’s energy system.

Africa faces the same measurement gap, likely larger. The Ember analysis underlying the import surge narrative is built from Chinese customs export data converted to megawatts using average module prices. This is a proxy measure, and the essay’s empirical argument depends heavily on it. A one-to-two-month shipping lag, warehouse storage, re-exports to neighboring countries, and panels imported but not installed all create divergence between import volumes and installed capacity. In 2023, an estimated 80 GW of solar panels sat in European warehouses (Ember, 2025). Africa’s warehousing and distribution infrastructure is thinner and less formalized, making the gap harder to estimate.

Ember’s generation tracking covers only six African countries, four of which report solar generation. IRENA and the IEA have annual data with significant reporting lags. South Africa is the only sub-Saharan country with monthly solar capacity addition data in any public database (Ember, 2025). An Afrobarometer survey across 34 countries, conducted before the current import surge, found that 23 percent of respondents already used electricity sources other than the national grid (Afrobarometer, 2023). AFSIA is building data collection infrastructure, but institutional capacity for energy data across 50-plus jurisdictions is genuinely thin. AFSIA’s 2026 Outlook partially addresses this by combining bottom-up project tracking with top-down Chinese export data, arriving at a total installed capacity estimate of up to 63.9 GW—nearly three times the 23.4 GW figure in its project database. Cross-referencing Ember’s Chinese customs-based estimates with IRENA capacity data, IEA tracking, and national utility records where available would further strengthen the evidentiary base; at present, no single source captures the full picture.

The argument for investing in better measurement is both an energy planning argument and an industrial policy argument. A continent cannot build a solar manufacturing sector around demand signals it cannot see clearly. If the trade data is right that something on the order of 35 GW of panels are unaccounted for in official statistics, the actual market for components, maintenance, and system integration is substantially larger than planners and investors currently assume.

5. Conclusions

The solar import surge in sub-Saharan Africa is real, market-driven, and economically rational in the specific conditions that currently prevail. The collapse in Chinese module prices, the increase in diesel and grid electricity costs, and the dual shock of currency devaluations and fuel subsidy removal across several major economies created a window in which solar payback periods compressed dramatically. However, Chinese capacity rationalization is already pushing module prices upward, and Western trade barriers will continue redirecting Chinese export pressure in ways that benefit African consumers in the short term but create supply dependency risks over the medium term.

The manufacturing question is more difficult. Panel assembly can happen in African countries, and the late-2025 shift toward importing cells and wafers rather than finished modules is an early signal that some countries are beginning to capture assembly value (Ember, 2026). Ethiopia’s emergence as a manufacturing node illustrates both the opportunity and its fragility. The facilities are backed by a mix of actors: a Japanese-listed company (TOYO Co., Ltd.), a Singapore-structured entity using Canadian Solar technology (Origin Solar), and Chinese-linked Hainan Drinda—all attracted primarily by tariff arbitrage rather than African domestic demand. Over $170 million in committed manufacturing investment could be undermined by a single U.S. anti-circumvention ruling (Bloomberg, 2026; China Global South Project, 2025; TOYO, 2024). But competing at the module level, even with tariff protection, requires scale that most African markets cannot yet provide independently. Another compelling manufacturing opportunity lies in battery precursor processing, where Africa’s mineral endowments create genuine comparative advantage (UNECA, 2021; ECDPM, 2023), and in balance-of-system components, where transport costs and local requirements can support viable domestic production.

Module prices at $0.07-$0.09 per watt made solar economics compelling enough to trigger a continental import surge. Prices at $0.12 per watt, where Wood Mackenzie expects them to stabilize, will still be competitive with diesel in most markets. But the margin that makes local assembly attractive against Chinese finished-product imports is thinner at higher prices. The countries that use the current window to build assembly capacity, establish procurement frameworks that anchor domestic demand, and begin processing their own battery minerals will be positioned differently from those that treated the price collapse as a consumption opportunity alone.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Macdonald Amoah
Macdonald is an independent researcher with interests across critical mineral supply chains, advanced manufacturing gaps, the defense industrial base, and the geopolitical risks of the mining sector.

Morgan Bazilian
Director, Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines
Morgan Bazilian is the Director of the Payne Institute and a Professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, he wD.as lead energy specialist at the World Bank. He has over two decades of experience in the energy sector and is regarded as a leading expert in international affairs, policy and investment. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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