Africa's solar inflection point

Between June 2023 and June 2025, sub-Saharan Africa's solar panel imports from China nearly tripled outside South Africa, rising from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW. Twenty countries set individual import records. Twenty-five imported at least 100 MW each, up from fifteen a year earlier. Yet Chinese customs data shows 58.1 GW of panels shipped to the continent since 2017, while the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) puts operational installed capacity at just 23.4 GW (AFSIA, 2026; Ember, 2025). That apparent gap of roughly 35 GW is itself a signal of how poorly understood this transition remains. AFSIA's own 2026 Outlook, using a top-down methodology incorporating Chinese export data, estimates actual installed capacity could be as high as 63.9 GW across the continent: far more panels have likely been installed than project databases have captured, rather than simply sitting in warehouses (AFSIA, 2026).