PowerPath is working at penetrating the off-grid energy solution market in Africa. The off-grid solar market in Africa has been growing rapidly (IEA, 2021). In 2020, the off-grid solar sector in Africa attracted investments of over £1 billion, reaching a cumulative installed capacity of around 10.4GW at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 54% (IRENA, 2022).
The market demand for off-grid energy solutions on the African continent and respectable Total Addressable Market (TAM) is expected to rise. However, despite the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 of ensuring universal access to reliable and affordable energy, 600 million people will still lack accessible and reliable electricity in Africa by 2030. Off-grid solar energy is the best-suited and most cost-effective solution to electrify an estimated 55% of currently unconnected households in the next five years (World Bank, 2022). These figures grow significantly if we account for a sizeable additional market opportunity to leverage solar for productive use across the abundant Sub-Saharan Africa agricultural sector.
Madagascar has a promising emerging off-grid solar market, although constrained by low affordability (WorldBank, 2023). About 150 conventional AC minigrids have been deployed in the last two decades by the public utility JIRAMA and a few private operators. But the population growth has outpaced by far the connection rate.
PowerPath’s serviceable market is Madagascar and Sub-Saharan Africa. With the New Energy Policy (2015), the Malagasy government has set an ambitious goal of increasing the electricity access rate to 70% by 2030, with 85% of the energy mix supplied by renewable energy, creating a market size of £83 million for mini-grids (African-Development-Bank, 2020).
PowerPath embodies an initiative in the mini grid sector which is highly supported by many international development partners, including GIZ, AFD, KfW, EIB, AFDB.