The World Bank has approved $50 million for a solar agricultural expansion project in Nigeria and five other African countries.
Agriculture employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet inefficiencies continue to erode farmers’ incomes and food supply.
The expansion of PUFF-backed solutions is expected to have significant implications for Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, particularly in tackling post-harvest losses driven by inadequate storage, unreliable electricity, and limited access to modern processing tools.
A Bloomberg report said the project, disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, will boost productivity, cut post-harvest losses, and expand clean energy access.
The funding 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, with implementation led by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access.
The World Bank-backed initiative has attracted strong backing from development partners, with officials indicating that the programme could expand further as country-level implementation gathers pace.
The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the scheme, has signalled that additional resources may be deployed over time.
“There is always the ability to scale that up,” the 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.
