Just under half of Nigeria has never been connected to the national grid with 6GW capacity. South Africa manages 48GW of grid power for its 63m people. Even Bangladesh, poorer than Nigeria until recently and home to 170m people, generates 16GW. In Nigeria, when production reached a high of more than 5GW one day in March, the surge made the grid collapse.
Frequent power cuts in hospitals cost lives. Air-conditioning is a luxury. Tech entrepreneurs are forced to build their own power plants to run their data centres. In 2023 Nigerians spent 16.5trn naira ($10.3bn) on generating off-grid power, equivalent to 60% of the entire government budget.
Nigeria cannot be Africa’s economic powerhouse until it can power its houses.
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