Sun King moves big on Ethiopia with $150 Million solar investment

Sun King, the world’s largest off-grid solar company, plans to invest up to $150 million in Ethiopia by 2030. The solar company said it would be targeting two million households and businesses in one of Africa’s most populous but least electrified nations.

The planned investment comes through a memorandum of understanding signed with the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC).

Under the agreement, Sun King will establish a local subsidiary, while the EIC will work with government agencies to help the company secure the permits and licences it needs to operate.

The Ethiopia move is part of a broader $1.3 billion continental expansion plan Sun King has set for 2030, as demand for off-grid power solutions continues to rise across Africa.

Why Sun King chose Ethiopia as its next expansion base

Ethiopia is an unusual case. The country can generate and export power to neighbouring countries, thanks largely to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on a tributary of the Nile. Yet large portions of its more than 120 million people remain beyond the national grid.

Building transmission lines to reach remote communities is expensive and slow. Distributed renewable energy systems, home solar kits, and solar mini-grids are faster and cheaper. That is the gap Sun King is moving into.

“The agreement marks Sun King’s formal entry into one of Africa’s most significant untapped solar markets,” Sun King and the EIC said in a joint statement on Friday.

The timing also aligns with a wider continental push. The World Bank and the African Development Bank are leading the Mission 300 programme, an initiative that could channel tens of billions of dollars into bringing electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.

Sun King’s Ethiopia entry puts it squarely in the middle of that momentum.

Sun King’s growth and Africa’s off-grid opportunity

Sun King was founded in 2007 as Greenlight Planet by three University of Illinois graduates. It rebranded to its current name as it scaled across the continent.

The Kenya-based company now operates in 14 African countries and supplies a range of equipment, including small solar panels and batteries designed for homes and businesses without grid access.

Its products are sold under pay-as-you-go arrangements, allowing customers to pay in instalments rather than up front, a model that has made solar power accessible to lower-income households who could not otherwise afford it.

The situation for Sun King’s expansion is clear. In Africa, almost 600 million people lack access to an electricity grid. This makes Africa the main area of growth for companies providing solar power independently of the grid, and Sun King has become the biggest company in this market.

With Ethiopia now added to its footprint, the company is targeting one of the last major untapped markets on the continent.

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