Featured in Powering AI – 03-2026

Augmenting African solar

The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) has identified more than 42,000 solar projects across Africa to date, but Chinese solar module export data to the continent suggests there are many more yet to be accounted for. AFSIA CEO John van Zuylen spoke to pv magazine about the ongoing effort to create the continent’s most detailed solar database.

By

Patrick Jowett

02 Mar 2026

Benban solar park in Egypt is one of the world’s largest solar farms, but much of Africa’s installed capacity comes from smaller installations that are difficult to quantify due to limited data. | Image: NASA Johnson Space Center/Wikimedia Commons

While some African countries have institutions tracking new solar capacity, data collection on the continent remains in its infancy, leaving the full scale of Africa’s PV deployment unclear. In an effort to provide the fullest possible picture of Africa’s solar market, AFSIA began a continent-wide solar data collection effort in 2019 from its base in …

Subscribe to get access to this content

Purchase a digital or print subscription to read this article in full. Choose the best subscription for you.