The World Bank has approved $50 million in fresh financing to scale up 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 initiative, disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its development partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, will support the deployment of solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps and grain mills across Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a Bloomberg report.
Implementation will be led by CLASP, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access in emerging markets.
Development partners backing the programme have expressed confidence in its scalability as implementation gathers momentum at the country level. The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the initiative, has indicated that additional funding could be mobilised over time.
“There is always the ability to scale that up,” President of the Rockefeller Foundation, 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,” he added.
Shah explained that the foundation focuses on financing innovative projects that governments, multilateral institutions and development partners can later expand at scale. His remarks underscore growing donor confidence in the commercial viability of solar-powered agricultural infrastructure across Africa’s rural and off-grid communities.
The financing is being channelled through the Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), an initiative under Mission 300 — a flagship programme supported 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 global epicentre of 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 lack reliable power, a shortfall that continues to constrain economic growth and limit productivity for farmers and small businesses.
PUFF is designed to close this 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 that are typically 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 concluded, the programme is now transitioning into full-scale deployment, backed by new World Bank funding and philanthropic capital.
In Nigeria, the expansion of PUFF-supported solutions is expected to significantly strengthen the agricultural value chain, particularly by addressing post-harvest losses caused by poor storage, unreliable electricity and limited access to modern processing technologies.
Agriculture employs more than one-third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet persistent inefficiencies continue to erode farmers’ incomes and threaten food supply.
One of the pilot beneficiaries, SokoFresh, currently serves about 19,000 farmers across East Africa through its solar-powered cold storage facilities. The technology enables farmers to store produce for longer periods, reduce waste, and access higher-value markets.
By scaling access to solar-powered agricultural technologies in Nigeria and other participating countries, the World Bank and its partners aim to enhance food security, improve rural livelihoods and accelerate Africa’s transition to clean and sustainable energy.
