THE World Bank has approved $50 million in financing for a solar-powered agricultural expansion project that will be implemented across Nigeria and five other African countries, in a move aimed at boosting productivity, cutting post-harvest losses, and expanding access to clean energy.
The initiative targets long-standing challenges in Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, where unreliable electricity, inadequate storage facilities, and limited access to modern processing tools continue to undermine farmers’ incomes and food supply.
Agriculture employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet inefficiencies after harvest remain a major source of loss.
According to a Bloomberg report, the funding will support the rollout of solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, 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.
The project is being financed through the Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), an initiative operating under Mission 300, a joint World Bank and African Development Bank programme that aims to mobilise tens of billions of dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
Development partners have expressed strong backing for the scheme, with indications that funding could increase as implementation progresses.
The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the programme, has signalled its readiness to deploy additional resources.
Speaking during a visit to a solar-powered cold storage facility in Nairobi, the foundation’s president, Rajiv Shah, said the programme has clear potential for country-by-country scale-up.
PUFF is designed to bridge affordability gaps by providing grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors of solar-powered equipment, enabling them to reach rural and off-grid communities often excluded from conventional financing.
Between 2022 and 2024, the facility 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 financing and philanthropic capital.
The expansion comes as Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of global energy poverty, accounting for more than 80 per cent of the world’s population without access to electricity, with an estimated 600 million people still living without reliable power.