Energy-poor countries in the Global South are shifting from importing coal and gas toward solar because solar is now cheaper and greener. Low-priced Chinese solar panels have reduced purchase and installation costs, creating an inflection point favoring distributed and utility-scale solar deployment. Chronic grid weaknesses and blackouts in countries like Pakistan and South Africa pushed households and businesses to install rooftop systems and feed excess power to grids. Government incentives such as tax breaks and payments for exported electricity accelerated adoption. Economic savings alone now make solar the preferable option even where climate concerns are limited.
While overall sales to African countries are still small compared to these traditional export markets, the Global South appears to be at a turning point in how it thinks about energy. For decades, energy-starved countries largely had one default option when they wanted to add new power supply: import coal and gas. Now, for the first time, solar energy is emerging as the cheaper and greener way forward, so there's no need to sacrifice the environment for development.
What's happening in Africa right now might sound familiar, especially if you know anything about the global green energy industry. We've seen several versions of this story before, most notably in Pakistan last year. In 2024, Pakistan installed about 15 Gigawatts of solar panels; for context, the country's total peak electricity demand is about 30 Gigawatts. Households put so many panels on their rooftops that Pakistani cities now look visibly different on satellite maps. The trend is threatening the future of Pakistan's national grid because people are using their own panels to generate power, reducing the need to buy electricity from the grid. And almost all of this happened because the country was mass-importing solar panels from its neighbor and ally, China.
But across the board, the main thing driving the popularity of solar is simple: the cost to purchase and install Chinese panels has gotten so low that the world has reached an inflection point. Even if a country isn't particularly worried about climate change, it simply makes economic sense to generate energy from solar, says Anika Patel,
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