The World Bank has approved a $50 million financing package to support a solar-powered agricultural expansion project in Nigeria and five other African countries, as efforts intensify to boost food security, cut post-harvest losses, and expand access to clean energy.
Agriculture employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet inefficiencies linked to poor storage facilities, unreliable electricity, and limited access to modern processing tools continue to erode farmers’ incomes and weaken food supply chains.
The new funding is expected to have far-reaching implications for Nigeria’s agricultural value chain through the expansion of solutions backed by the Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), particularly in addressing post-harvest losses caused by inadequate cold storage and energy constraints.
According to a Bloomberg report, the project was disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its development partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation. The initiative aims to boost productivity, reduce food waste, and expand clean energy access across rural and off-grid communities.
The funding will support the deployment of solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps, and grain mills in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Implementation will be led by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access.
Development partners have expressed strong backing for the World Bank-supported initiative, with officials noting that the programme could expand further as country-level implementation gains momentum.
The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the scheme, has indicated that additional resources may be mobilised over time.
“There is always the ability to scale that up,” the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr Rajiv Shah, said on January 15 during a visit to a solar-powered cold storage facility operated by SokoFresh in Nairobi.
“There’ll be more resources country by country as well,” he added.
Shah noted that the foundation focuses on financing innovations and new ideas that governments, the World Bank, and other partners can subsequently scale for broader impact.
The financing is being channelled through PUFF, an initiative operating under Mission 300, a flagship programme backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Mission 300 aims to mobilise tens of billions of dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of global energy poverty, accounting for more than 80 per cent of the world’s population without access to electricity. An estimated 600 million people in the region still live without reliable power, a challenge that continues to constrain economic growth and agricultural productivity.
PUFF is designed to bridge this gap by providing grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors of solar-powered equipment, enabling them to reach rural and off-grid communities often excluded from traditional financing.
Between 2022 and 2024, the programme completed a two-year pilot phase, supporting 24 businesses across the six participating countries. With the pilot phase concluded, PUFF is now transitioning into full-scale deployment, backed by fresh World Bank financing and philanthropic capital.
