Nigeria's Solar Market: How Many Panels It Imports, Quarter by Quarter

Nobody counts how much solar Nigeria installs. But almost every panel crosses a border, and borders keep records. This report sets the four records side by side: what China’s customs declared, what Nigeria’s own import statistics (NBS) show, what the shipments weighed, and what went to the ports next door. They agree on the big picture: Nigeria now imports about ten times as many solar panels a year as it did in 2019.

The market at a glance

How many panels does Nigeria import each quarter?

About 890 MW in 2026 Q3, up from 471 MW a year earlier and about 32 MW in the first quarter of 2019. The solid bars are China’s own record of finished panels shipped to Nigeria. The hatched tops are our estimate for panels from everywhere else.

The chart shows three phases:

• 2019–2021: flat at about 30–100 MW a quarter. Panels were small then, averaging 74 W each: solar home systems, lanterns and streetlights more than rooftops.
• 2022–2024: steady growth as the price of a panel leaving China fell from about $0.29 a watt to $0.10, the naira fell, and petrol and diesel prices rose after the subsidy ended.
• Since late 2024: a step up. 2026 is running at about 890 MW a quarter. Part of that is the rush in March 2026, when importers shipped 446 MW in a single month ahead of China cutting its export tax rebate on 1 April. But imports stayed near that level after the rush, even at higher prices.

How do we know these numbers are right?

By counting the same panels in three different ways and checking they agree. China’s customs record gives a dollar value, and Ember (which compiles it) converts that to watts with a monthly price. Two other measures don’t depend on that price at all: the weight China recorded for the same shipments, and the value Nigeria’s own customs put on the panels when they landed, as published by NBS.

• Weight agrees with China’s figure. Since 2023 China’s panel shipments to Nigeria have weighed 47–65 kg per kW of capacity, quarter by quarter. A modern 550 W panel weighs about 27 kg, or 50 kg per kW. If the watts were badly wrong, the weights wouldn’t line up.
• NBS runs about 10–25% higher, for known reasons. NBS values panels as they land in Lagos, so the figure includes freight (about a cent a watt). NBS records where goods were made, while China records where it sent them: Chinese panels shipped to Lomé or Cotonou and trucked on to Nigeria count as China to NBS, but as Togo or Benin to China. And NBS records arrival, a month or two after China records departure.
• Q2 2026 is the clearest test, and every measure lands near a gigawatt. China declared 859 MW landing in the quarter; the weight says 1,048 MW; NBS’s value says 1,081 MW from China and 1,252 MW from all countries.
• Two NBS quarters don’t fit. Q4 2024 (recorded under the code for loose cells) and Q4 2025 come out at two to four times China’s record and every other measure. They look like delayed customs entries being caught up, so we don’t build on them.

How big is Nigeria’s solar panel market?

About 2.0 GW and $197m in 2025 at the price panels left China, rising to about 3.5 GW and $423m in 2026. Each year is a range. The low end is what China declared, a floor for panels made in China. The central estimate adds other countries. The high end adds every panel China sent to Togo and Benin, some of which reaches Nigeria by road.

These values are at the price panels left China. By the time they land, with freight, clearing and the importer’s costs, they are worth more: NBS valued 2025’s panel imports at ₦435–458 billion, about $290–300 million. A full system price also includes inverters, batteries, cabling and installation, which cost several times the panels, so the market for installed solar is far larger than these import values.

Why are solar panels so much cheaper now?

Because the price of a panel leaving China fell by two-thirds, from about $0.29 a watt in 2019 to $0.094 in early 2025. China built far more panel factories than the world needed, and prices fell everywhere. That is why the watts Nigeria imports grew much faster than the dollars it spends on them: from 2019 to 2025 spending on Chinese panels roughly quadrupled, from $41m to $160m, while the watts grew about elevenfold. In 2026 the price rose to about $0.115 after China cut its export tax rebate.

For a buyer in Lagos the falling dollar price has mostly offset the weaker naira. Lithium batteries have followed the same path: a 15kWh LiFePO₄ battery that sold for over ₦3 million in Lagos in August 2025 now sells for about ₦2.1–₦2.3 million. You can see today’s prices on our battery price list.

What kind of panels is Nigeria buying?

Bigger ones. The average panel China ships to Nigeria went from about 74 W in 2019 to 255 W in 2025 and 290 W in 2026. That average mixes the 550–620 W panels that go on rooftops with many small panels for solar home systems, streetlights and fans. The shift says the market has moved from small off-grid kits to proper rooftop systems for homes and businesses replacing generator hours.

Where do Nigeria’s solar panels come from?

Mostly China: 75–86% of the value in each quarter NBS published from 2025 on. Panels from elsewhere usually cost more per watt, so China’s share of the watts is higher, about 85%. Other suppliers show up in smaller amounts: Germany sent ₦13.8 billion of panels in the second quarter of 2026, and the United States ₦3.2 billion in the last quarter of 2024.

The ports next door matter too. In 2025 China shipped 221 MW of panels to Togo, about 23 watts for every person there, three times Nigeria’s rate. Lomé is a regional transshipment port, so part of that is likely to end up in Nigeria. Benin took 102 MW. Going the other way, Niger imports almost nothing directly from China and is partly supplied overland. We count Togo and Benin only in the high end of the range.

What about solar cells?

China declared 4.7 GW of loose solar cells for Nigeria in January–September 2026, against 0.2 GW in all of 2024. Cells are what a panel factory assembles into panels. The shipments are real cells, as far as China’s records go: the count, weight and value all match cells of about 10 W each. But they don’t fit Nigeria:

• They are many times Nigeria's panel assembly capacity, estimated at a few hundred MW a year.
• Cells shipped in March and April 2026 were worth enough to rank among NBS's top 15 imports for the second quarter, but they don't appear there.
• Nigeria does now export panels: ₦85.79 billion in the first quarter of 2026, including ₦34.24 billion to the United States and ₦20.4 billion to Burkina Faso. That is far less than the cells.

So we keep cells out of every total above and treat where they end up as an open question. NBS’s figures for the third quarter of 2026, due around December, are the next test.

Where is the market heading?

In our central scenario, about 7.0 GW of panels a year by 2030, with a low case of 3.7 GW and a high case of 10.9 GW. These are scenarios for imports, not forecasts of installations (see the hatched bars after 2026 in Chart 3). The drivers are the same ones behind the last five years: the price of generator fuel, the reliability of the grid, and the price of panels and batteries. Most of these panels are not going onto solar farms. They are going onto homes, shops, offices and factories, bought one system at a time, which is why the growth doesn’t show up in the grid figures. We explore what that adds up to in The Infrastructure of Abundance, and what a generator kWh costs by comparison in our generator cost breakdown.

How we built these numbers

• China’s record: Ember’s compilation of Chinese customs data, monthly from 2017 to September 2026: panels (HS 8541.43) and cells (8541.42) shipped to Nigeria, with value, weight, count and megawatts.
• Other countries: China ÷ 0.85. NBS puts China at 75–86% of the value in the quarters it published (81% on average), and non-Chinese panels cost more per watt.
• NBS: the quarterly Foreign Trade in Goods tables. Panels only appear when they rank among the top imports, so we have them for Q4 2024 to Q2 2026, with some quarters for China only. Naira converted at each quarter’s average official rate, and divided by China’s price plus a cent a watt for freight.
• Weight: China’s recorded weight ÷ 50 kg per kW.
• 2026: October–December estimated at the average of the latest four months, leaving out the March–April rush.