Nigeria To Benefit As World Bank Expands $50m Solar Farming Programme in Africa

The World Bank has approved $50 million to scale solar-powered agricultural solutions in Nigeria and five other African countries, in a move aimed at boosting farm productivity, reducing post-harvest losses, and expanding access to clean energy.

The development was disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg reports.

The funding will support the deployment of solar-powered cold rooms, refrigeration systems, water pumps, and grain mills across Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Implementation will be led by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access.

What They Are Saying

The World Bank-backed initiative has attracted strong support from development partners, with officials indicating that the programme could expand further as country-level implementation gains momentum.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the initiative, has signalled openness to deploying additional resources over time.

“There is always the ability to scale that up,” Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, said on January 15 during a visit to a solar-powered cold storage facility operated by SokoFresh in Nairobi.

“There’ll be more resources country by country as well,” Shah added.

“We finance the innovations, the new projects and the new ideas that governments, the World Bank and others can then take to scale,” he said during a separate visit to a farm facility using solar-powered cold rooms for export-bound produce.

These comments reflect growing donor confidence that solar-powered agricultural infrastructure can be commercially deployed at scale, particularly across Africa’s rural and off-grid communities.

Backstory

The financing is being channelled through the Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), an initiative operating under Mission 300, a flagship programme backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Mission 300 aims to mobilise tens of billions of dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of global energy poverty, accounting for over 80 per cent of the world’s population without access to electricity. An estimated 600 million people in the region still live without reliable power, a gap that continues to constrain economic growth and agricultural productivity.

PUFF is designed to bridge the affordability gap by providing grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors of solar-powered equipment, enabling them to reach rural and off-grid communities typically excluded from conventional financing.

Between 2022 and 2024, PUFF completed a two-year pilot phase, supporting 24 businesses across the six participating countries. With the pilot phase concluded, the programme is now transitioning into full-scale deployment, backed by fresh World Bank funding and philanthropic capital.

What You Should Know

The expansion of PUFF-backed solutions is expected to have major implications for Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, particularly in tackling post-harvest losses caused by poor storage, unreliable electricity, and limited access to modern processing tools.

Agriculture employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet inefficiencies continue to erode farmers’ incomes and threaten food security.

One of the pilot beneficiaries, SokoFresh, operates solar-powered cold storage facilities and currently serves about 19,000 farmers across East Africa. Solar-powered refrigeration enables farmers to store produce longer, access higher-value markets, and significantly reduce waste.

By scaling access to solar-powered agricultural technologies in Nigeria and other participating countries, the World Bank and its partners aim to improve food security, raise farmers’ incomes, and accelerate Africa’s transition to clean energy.