The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has acquired a strategic equity stake in WeLight, Africa’s largest developer of solar-powered mini-grids, anchoring a €27 million ($29 million) financing round aimed at expanding off-grid electrical networks across sub-Saharan Africa.
The investment brings the World Bank Group’s private-sector lending arm into WeLight’s core shareholder base alongside its founding partners: pan-African conglomerate AXIAN Group, French industrial tech firm Sagemcom SAS, and Norway’s development finance institution, Norfund AS.
The fresh capital injection will fund WeLight’s entry into Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo—two countries that together hold the world’s largest populations cut off from centralized electricity infrastructure—while scaling up its primary footprints in Madagascar and Mali.
“The partnership marks a major milestone in building a pan-African platform for large-scale mini-grid deployment and expanding access to reliable electricity across rural communities,” Romain de Villeneuve, Chief Executive Officer of WeLight, said in a statement.
Founded in 2018, WeLight operates nearly 190 localized solar utility networks serving over 800,000 people daily. Its infrastructure bypasses traditional national electricity grids by constructing localized clean-energy networks. These integrate commercial-grade solar arrays, high-capacity battery storage systems, and localized distribution lines directly into rural and peri-urban villages that state utilities have historically ignored.
The transaction highlights a mounting institutional rush into distributed renewable energy (DRE) assets as plunging photovoltaic equipment costs and better energy storage economics reshape the risk profiles of sub-Saharan utility markets. Private and multilateral investors are increasingly looking past fragile, centralized state transmission lines to fund nimbler localized operators.
The expansion aligns with “Mission 300,” a multi-billion-dollar joint initiative by the World Bank and the African Development Bank that aims to connect 300 million Africans to reliable electricity by 2030. Off-grid systems and distributed solar frameworks are expected to account for a large portion of those connections.
Chasing a Massive Off-Grid Market
With the newly secured capital, WeLight has established a roadmap to deploy more than 1,000 localized mini-grids across the continent, with an ultimate goal of bringing electricity to nearly 10 million people by the end of the decade.
The strategy takes WeLight directly into complex but high-yielding energy access markets. In Nigeria, despite a series of grid-modernization policies, the national power grid routinely operates below 5 gigawatts of active distribution, leaving over 85 million citizens completely unserved.
By taking an equity position, the IFC signals that decentralized solar networks have evolved from isolated humanitarian projects into viable, commercially bankable utility platforms capable of crowding in mainstream private capital.
“The investment will help mobilize private capital, scale electrification solutions, and support inclusive economic growth through improved energy access,” said Fatoumata Sissoko-Sy, IFC’s Regional Industry Manager for Infrastructure in West Africa.
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