The off-grid solar sector in Nigeria is quietly doing what decades of centralized planning could not: delivering reliable electricity to homes and businesses that the national grid has long forgotten. While the broader economy continues to wrestle with familiar headaches like policy inconsistencies and infrastructure gaps, this one sector has managed to grow, attract investment, and actually work.
What makes that worth paying attention to is not just the electricity itself. It is the conditions that allowed the sector to take root. Where government stepped back, created a permissive regulatory environment, and let market players innovate, things moved. That contrast with sectors where bureaucratic bottlenecks and unclear policy have stalled progress for years is hard to ignore.
The lesson being drawn in reform conversations is straightforward: economic progress in Nigeria does not always require the state to do more. Sometimes it requires the state to do differently, or even less, in the right places. Off-grid energy did not thrive because of a grand intervention. It thrived because the door was left open.
That raises an obvious question for policymakers and the business community alike. Which other sectors are being held back not by lack of resources, but by the wrong kind of attention? The off-grid story is still being written, but it is already pointing somewhere useful.
Originally published by BusinessDay.