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But where the government has been unhelpful, the private sector has taken the lead in promoting it by offering households and small businesses the option of paying for their solar installations over time.
“The problem was affordability, but now customers can pay installments over a period of 18 months,” said Tunde Oladipupo, an agent for Sun King, a solar power company. Oladipupo, who is based in Oyo, southwestern Nigeria, said his company also serves energy-hungry small businesses like those that use freezers or pump water from boreholes.
After addressing the issue of high upfront costs, the model has proved to be a solution for the social problems drawn out by Nigeria’s energy crisis in poorly served and low-income households. For Monsurat Qadri, the challenge was helping her young daughter with homework in the evenings when there was no light. Grid electricity was unavailable and the other option, a generator, had become too expensive.
But now, “I’m done with worrying about lighting,” Qadri said. She has installed a small solar system that powers five bulbs and a fan, and paying the installments every month is easy for her.
In Nigeria, unlike Kenya, the use of solar power for industry is rare. “Not a single one as far as I know,” Mohammed Ettu, who runs Makhade Power Solutions in Lagos, said of big industrial productions in Nigeria that use solar power.
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