WeLight, the operator of more solar mini-grids across Africa than any other company, has secured a strategic investment from the International Finance Corp., giving the World Bank’s private-sector lending arm a stake in the business as it eyes expansion into Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Paris-based firm raised €27 million ($31 million) in a round that also included its founding shareholders, Axian Group Ltd., Sagemcom SAS and Norfund AS, the Norwegian development finance institution that co-founded WeLight in 2018 alongside the other partners.
The three established the company with a single mandate: deliver electricity to rural communities stranded beyond the reach of national power grids.
Six years on, WeLight operates nearly 190 mini-grids across Madagascar and Mali, serving more than 800,000 people. The fresh capital, the company said Tuesday, “will allow WeLight to accelerate its development, extend its geographic presence and prepare a new phase of growth at greater scale.”
The deal lands WeLight squarely at the centre of one of the most pressing infrastructure challenges in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to roughly 570 million people without access to electricity, approximately 80 percent of the global total.
Nigeria and Congo together account for around 160 million of those, giving the two nations the largest power-access deficits anywhere on earth.
That scale of need has drawn increasingly serious capital. The World Bank and African Development Bank are jointly steering Mission 300, an ambitious program designed to mobilise tens of billions of dollars and connect 300 million Africans to electricity by the end of the decade. Distributed renewable energy, chiefly mini-grids and household solar systems, is expected to carry a substantial share of that target, making operators like WeLight central to delivering on the pledge.
Mini-grids, which generate and distribute electricity within a localised area independent of a national network, have emerged as a cost-effective solution for low-density rural populations that utilities have historically bypassed.
Declining solar panel prices and improved battery storage have sharpened the economics, drawing private investors who once viewed the sector as too thin on returns.
IFC’s entry into WeLight signals growing institutional confidence in that model. The corporation has been expanding its footprint in African energy access in recent years, pairing concessional and commercial capital to crowd in private money at scale.
The company did not disclose a timeline for its first mini-grids in either country.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
