Aging dams and droughts are sparking a huge shift toward solar.

Ethiopia’s official opening of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile near Sudan on September 9, 2025, celebrated an engineering feat and the national will to build Africa’s largest hydropower project. Yet big dams are in trouble elsewhere in Africa, giving rise to a decentralized, faster and more flexible solution: solar mini grids.

As Afrologi Green podcast hosts Aisha and Aidan explain, most dams in Africa are decades old and in need of billions of dollars of repairs. New projects often are stalled by financing hurdles. And droughts attributed to climate change are sapping the reservoirs of vital hydropower sites such as Zambia’s Kariba power station on the Zambezi River. That is causing lengthy power cuts and economic disruptions.

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In 2025, solar energy may have started a long surge in Africa. Imports of solar panels climbed 60 percent in the year ending in June 2025, according to Ember, a London-based energy think tank. With South Africa leading, Nigeria overtook sunny Egypt to claim the second import spot. Zambia’s imports rose eight-fold in the period, while water-rich Ethiopia’s purchases tripled. Ember described the growth as “the first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa.”

Zambia is racing to scale up solar and is aiming to operate at least 200 mini grid systems across the country by 2030, bringing reliable electricity to more rural residents, according to the World Bank. The spread of these localized energy systems could have implications for how energy is managed and how economic development changes in sub-Saharan Africa, as Aisha and Aidan explore in Episode 02 of Afrologi Green.

Cover photo: Kariba Dam by ZESCO.