Funding to deploy solar cold rooms, irrigation pumps, grain mills to cut losses and boost farm productivity
The World Bank has approved $50 million in new financing to support a solar-powered agricultural expansion project in Nigeria and five other African countries, aimed at boosting farm productivity, reducing post-harvest losses, and expanding access to clean energy.
The initiative, disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its development partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, will support the deployment of solar-powered agricultural equipment across Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to a Bloomberg report, the funding will be used to roll out solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps, and grain mills, helping farmers overcome persistent challenges linked to poor storage, unreliable electricity, and limited access to modern processing tools.
Agriculture employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce, yet inefficiencies across the value chain continue to erode farmers’ incomes and threaten food security. Experts say the expansion of solar-backed solutions could significantly strengthen Nigeria’s agricultural system, particularly by reducing post-harvest losses caused by inadequate storage and power shortages.
Implementation of the project will be led by Clasp, a Washington, DC–based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and expanding access to clean energy technologies in emerging markets.
The programme is being financed through the Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), an initiative under Mission 300, a flagship effort jointly backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB). Mission 300 seeks to mobilise tens of billions of dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
Development partners have indicated that the initiative could scale further as implementation progresses at the country level. The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the programme, has signalled its readiness to deploy additional funding.
“There is always the ability to scale that up,” President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, said on January 15 during a visit to a solar-powered cold storage facility operated by SokoFresh in Nairobi.
Shah added that more resources would be made available on a country-by-country basis, noting that the foundation supports early-stage innovations that governments and multilateral institutions can later expand.
“We finance the innovations, the new projects and the new ideas that governments, the World Bank and others can then take to scale,” he said during a separate visit to a farm using solar-powered cold rooms for export-bound produce.
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the global epicentre of 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 lack reliable power, limiting productivity for farmers and small businesses.
PUFF is designed to address this challenge by offering grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors of solar-powered equipment, enabling them to serve rural and off-grid communities that are often excluded from traditional financing.
Between 2022 and 2024, the facility completed a two-year pilot phase, supporting 24 businesses across the six participating countries. With the pilot concluded, the programme is now moving into full-scale deployment, backed by fresh World Bank funding and philanthropic capital.
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