More than 80 million people in Nigeria, nearly 40% of the population, lack access to electricity. The Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) helped expand such access by supporting the preparation and implementation of the Nigeria Electrification Project from 2018 to 2024.
The project attracted and scaled up private sector investment in Nigeria’s solar hybrid mini grids and standalone solar systems. This helped transform the sector and fostered innovation among local and international developers. The project supported the establishment of 125 mini grids and the sale of over a million solar home systems to enable more than 5.5 million Nigerians to gain access to electricity. It also created over 5,000 private sector local green jobs.
ESMAP mobilized a team of mini grid experts to advise the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency and provided technical support to procure and oversee studies covering geospatial analysis for mini grid portfolio preparation, customization of the Odyssey eProcurement platform, cost benchmarking, developing minimum technical standards, matchmaking of developers and appliance suppliers, and other analytics critical to the project’s design and implementation. ESMAP hosted knowledge-sharing events and produced the Mini Grid for Half a Billion People handbook and the Mini Grids for Underserved Customers report. Both have become widely used reference guides for practitioners in Nigeria’s mini grid sector and beyond. A follow-on $750 million IDA project aims to provide over 17.5 million Nigerians with new or improved access to electricity through distributed renewable energy solutions.
