Building out Africa’s energy infrastructure is vital for achieving economic growth on the continent and battery energy storage is a key platform technology enabling this.

Companies around the world are beginning to recognise the size of the opportunity presented by Africa’s energy storage markets.

“We see Africa not only for its resources, we also see Africa as a big market for energy storage,” said Xiaoshen Wang, chief executive and Vice Chairman for Ganfeng Lithium, at Benchmark’s Giga Africa event in Marrakesh, Morocco.

  • The installed capacity of BESS in Africa is set to grow over 700% between 2025 and 2030, with South Africa representing the largest proportion of this, according to Rho Motion’s BESS Forecast.

Africa’s need for energy storage

“Right now the lights are off [in Africa],” Mujeeb Ijaz, founder of Our Next Energy (ONE), told attendees at Giga Africa, explaining the connection between access to electricity and GDP. “If we were to meet with leaders of the various countries here in Africa and talk about ambition on GDP […] you can align that information with people’s access to electricity.”

Microgrids utilising solar energy and other renewables will play a key part in developing African electricity access, especially where population centres are more dispersed.

“Now, investing in infrastructure has always been a centralised model,” Ijaz said. “But Africa is different. Africa doesn’t have all of those big cities: It’s a rural and distributed population. So we need a distributed idea around infrastructure.”

Ganfeng’s Wang agreed, saying that building a large energy grid would be costly. “This solar plus energy storage will be the perfect solution for the population in the remote areas, so they can access the electricity. So we see this as a big potential.”