As Ethiopiaid works to support our partners through the climate crisis, we are exploring solar power and renewable energy. Discover more in this series of guest blogs written by Ethiopiaid donor and energy expert Andrew AJ Walker.
In part 2 of this 3-part series, read more about solar power in Ethiopia and how it could be transformational for schools, clinics and communities.
If you think solar power is good – wait until you see what it can do in Ethiopia…
Do you worry about power cuts? Are you on a WhatsApp group for your street which occasionally bursts to life when a neighbour is trying to understand if an outage is just them? Now imagine that daily, how long before you looked for an alternative?
In Ethiopia, even connecting to the main grid can be impossibly expensive. And if you do manage it, you can expect around 21 hours of blackouts every month. As a percentage, that sounds modest — until you’re running a clinic where medicines need stable refrigeration, or preparing lunch for a schoolful of hungry students. This isn’t inconvenience. It’s a ceiling on what you can achieve.
These aren’t planned maintenance windows. Not a storm. Just a system failing to do its job, repeatedly, as a matter of routine.
The generator trap
The conventional response across Ethiopia, and across Africa, is the diesel generator. Every hospital, school, and business with sufficient resources runs one as backup. It’s an accepted cost of operating in a country where the grid’s promise and its performance are very different things.
Electricity from a diesel generator typically costs between £0.20 and £0.40 per kilowatt-hour — and in remote areas, where fuel must travel furthest, costs are highest, precisely where institutions can least afford them. We’ve seen what geopolitics does to diesel pricing. When the Strait of Hormuz crisis pushed oil from around £70 to £140 per barrel, a rural clinic budgeting month to month faced stark choices. In some areas, diesel is restricted to emergency services entirely; and even authorised purchasers can queue for more than a day.
If you were designing an energy system for a school in rural Ethiopia, would you choose this one? The generator persists not because it’s a good solution, but because it was the only available one.
A technology that quietly became affordable
Putting solar panels on a clinic roof is not a niche technology or a development experiment. It is a proven solution that has undergone one of the most dramatic cost reductions in energy history.
In 2010, solar electricity cost around $0.46 per kilowatt-hour, more expensive than conventional generation. By 2024, according to IRENA, that figure stood at $0.04 per kWh. A fall of more than 90% in fourteen years. Solar is now the cheapest source of new electricity generation on Earth; cheaper than coal, gas, or nuclear.
The simplicity matters too. A solar installation with battery storage has no moving parts, no combustion, no emissions, no queues. No specialist is needed to operate it once it’s running. For a school 650 kilometres from the capital, that’s not a minor consideration.
Why Ethiopia’s geography changes everything
All of the above makes solar attractive in many parts of the world. In Ethiopia, the economics are even more compelling.
Solar irradiance measures how much energy arrives on a surface per square metre per day. In Ethiopia, the annual average is around 5.8 kWh/m² — reaching 7.5 kWh/m² in peak months. In the UK, the equivalent is around 2.5 kWh/m² per day, with a dramatic seasonal variation: as low as 0.5 kWh/m² in December, briefly touching 4.7 kWh/m² in July.
In practice: a 1kW solar panel generates around 1,000 kWh of useful output per year in the UK. The same panel in Ethiopia generates roughly 3,000 kWh, evenly spread across the year, with no long dark winters to design around.
What’s it worth?
A well-designed solar and battery system in Ethiopia typically pays back against diesel in three to four years. Panels last 25–30 years; inverters and batteries roughly half that. But the value isn’t captured on a spreadsheet.
Many organisations in Ethiopia have quietly designed around energy scarcity — choosing manual processes because you can’t rely on power. Give a school abundant, reliable electricity and the horizons shift. LED lighting improves learning environments. Computing education stops being an abstract ambition and becomes a timetable slot.
A modest installation of six to eight panels, with enough battery storage to cover evenings, might cost £4,000–£8,000 all in. Less than a typical domestic installation in the UK. And these systems are modular: as an organisation grows into its energy capability, panels and storage can be added incrementally. Cooking. Extended computing hours. Irrigation.
This is why framing solar as a “renewable energy” story misses the point. In Ethiopia, solar is a reliability story. A resilience story. It’s the story of a team that can finally plan beyond tomorrow, no longer hostage to international oil prices or grid outages that arrive without warning.
It means a clinic that can recruit staff willing to work nights, knowing the lights will stay on. A community that can invest in an irrigation pump, knowing it will run when needed.
The only question left
The technology works. The economics work. The geography is more favourable than almost anywhere on Earth. The alternatives; grid, generator, firewood are expensive, unreliable, or harmful. Usually all three.
So why are only a quarter of Ethiopia’s primary schools electrified? Why do two thirds of its health clinics still operate without reliable power?
The answer isn’t technical. It’s financial. The capital cost of installation, even at dramatically reduced panel prices, is beyond the reach of the communities that need it most.
Bridging that gap isn’t a question of technology, geography, or political will.
It’s a question of where we choose to direct investment, and whether those in a position to act consider it a priority.
About: AJ Walker is Strategy Director at Block One Group, advising on complex energy systems and renewable energy strategies in the UK and Europe. He led the Net Zero Consultancy team at Amber and championed the fundraising for the Hope Enterprises project in Asosa.
Read more
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As Ethiopiaid works to support our partners through the climate crisis, we are exploring solar power and renewable energy. Discover more in this series of
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