World Bank Approves $50m for Solar Farming in Nigeria, Five Others

The World Bank has approved $50 million to expand solar-powered agricultural solutions in Nigeria and five other African countries. The funding will boost farm productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, and expand access to clean energy.

The initiative was disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, according to Bloomberg. The financing will support solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps, and grain mills.

Deployment will cover Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Implementation will be led by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access.

Development partners say the programme could scale further as country-level implementation gathers pace. The Rockefeller Foundation, which has committed $12 million to the initiative, has indicated it may deploy additional resources over time.

“There is always the ability to scale that up,” Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah 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.”

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

The financing is being channelled through the Productive Use Financing Facility, an initiative operating under Mission 300. Mission 300 is backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank and aims to mobilise tens of billions of dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the centre of global energy poverty, accounting for more than 80% of the world’s population without electricity. An estimated 600 million people in the region still lack reliable power, limiting economic growth and agricultural productivity.

PUFF is designed to bridge affordability gaps by providing grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers of solar-powered equipment. The programme targets rural and off-grid communities that are often excluded from traditional financing.

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

In Nigeria, the expansion could significantly reduce post-harvest losses caused by poor storage and unreliable electricity. Agriculture employs more than a third of the country’s workforce, yet inefficiencies continue to cut into incomes.

One pilot beneficiary, SokoFresh, serves about 19,000 farmers across East Africa. Solar-powered storage allows farmers to extend shelf life, reach higher-value markets, and reduce waste.

By scaling these technologies, the World Bank and its partners aim to strengthen food security, raise farmer incomes, and accelerate clean energy adoption.