Africa wants to build its own solar panels. Here is why that is harder than it sounds.

African governments are accelerating plans to build domestic solar manufacturing capacity, driven by industrial ambition and growing unease over dependence on Chinese imports. But the numbers tell a sobering story: even after years of investment, the continent assembles only a fraction of the panels it installs, and every African factory remains dependent on China for the most critical components.

Domestic manufacturing is growing — from a very low base

The continent's largest economies have made real, if modest, progress in panel assembly.

• Morocco doubled its solar panel manufacturing capacity to 1 GW per year .
• South Africa now has roughly 1 GW per year of panel assembly capacity .
• Nigeria attracted $425 million in renewable energy manufacturing investment in 2025, lifting domestic production capacity from 120 MW to ~300 MW — a 150% increase in two years .
• Ethiopia also has emerging assembly lines, and three gigawatt-scale manufacturing plants are under development across the continent .

Yet Africa's installed solar capacity — the panels actually on rooftops and in fields — stands at just 23.4 GW according to the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA), a fraction of what the continent needs . (AFSIA's own top-down estimate, which uses Chinese export data, puts the figure as high as 63.9 GW, reflecting the difficulty of tracking off-grid installations .)

The gap with Chinese imports is staggering

Chinese panel imports dwarf local production by a huge and growing margin.

• In 2024, Chinese solar panel exports to Africa reached 11.36 GW, up 43% year-on-year, with South Africa leading at 3.81 GW and Morocco at 1.13 GW .
• In the 12 months to June 2025, imports hit 15 GW — a 60% increase .
• In full-year 2025, China shipped an estimated 18.8 GW to Africa, up 48% from 2024, according to Ember .
• Cumulatively, from 2017 to mid-2026, China exported 58.1 GW of solar panels to the continent .

Africa's total domestic panel manufacturing capacity (~2.3 GW across all countries) is roughly equivalent to two months of current Chinese imports.

The structural problem: No commercial-scale cell production

The most critical gap is that no African country produces solar cells or wafers at commercial scale . Existing 'manufacturing' lines — in Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria — are essentially module assembly operations that import Chinese cells, frames, glass, and backsheets.

This means:

• Africa captures only the lowest-value segment of the supply chain.
• Local content in assembled panels remains small.
• The continent is vulnerable to Chinese pricing, supply disruptions, and trade policy shifts.
• Analysts note that Chinese-produced cells are so cheap that even the assembly-stage cost advantage is razor-thin .

Chinese energy investment: Shifting from loans to exports

China remains the largest foreign investor in sub-Saharan Africa's power sector, with energy-sector finance exceeding $30 billion over 2010–2020 . From 2020 to 2024, Chinese investments delivered over 32 GW of power generation capacity across 30 countries — worth more than $33 billion . Solar alone made up 57% of Chinese renewable energy investment in Africa from 2010 to 2021 .

But the model is shifting. Chinese energy lending slowed sharply — only one energy loan was confirmed in 2024 (a transmission project in Angola) — as Beijing pivots toward export-driven equipment supply rather than project finance .

South Africa's push: Eskom Green and the 32 GW target

South Africa is positioning itself as the leading candidate for scaled local solar manufacturing and as a major clean-energy investment destination.

In June 2026, Eskom launched Eskom Green, a wholly owned renewable energy subsidiary approved to raise its own funding and enter public-private partnerships . The subsidiary targets 32 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2040, including solar, wind, and battery storage, with an initial phase of 5.6 GW of carbon-free generation . It received final PFMA regulatory approvals in July 2026 .

However, analysts expect this pipeline to create far more demand for Chinese solar equipment than for local production, since domestic manufacturing can scale nowhere near that fast .

Outlook: China's dominance will persist without major policy shifts

Industry analysts broadly agree that Chinese dominance in the African solar market will endure for the foreseeable future, barring significant tariffs, subsidies, or breakthroughs in upstream manufacturing .

• China produced 80% of the world's solar panels in 2024, and massive overcapacity means panel prices continue to fall .
• Chinese panel exports to Africa are growing faster than local capacity — the import-to-local-production ratio has widened, not narrowed.
• Even if all planned African gigawatt-scale factories come online, they would still supply only a fraction of projected demand, and their upstream cell and wafer dependency on China would remain .

Bottom line: Africa's domestic solar manufacturing push is real and accelerating, but it starts from a very small base, remains limited to low-value panel assembly, and is being outpaced by surging Chinese imports. Without large-scale cell production, protective trade policy, or sustained subsidies, Chinese dominance in the African solar value chain is expected to continue through this decade and likely into the 2030s .