Could giant batteries unlock the future of Africa’s green industries?

When Tropical Storm Ana hit Malawi in 2022, it hit the country’s shuttered power system hard, destroying a third of its electricity capacity and causing a nationwide system shutdown.

Even before the typhoon, Malawi’s electricity – which is largely generated from renewables including solar and hydro – has been unreliable for years, suffering from intermittent blackouts.

The government of Malawi now hopes to improve electricity stability by building a battery energy storage system (BESS) in its capital that will charge the surplus electricity produced when the sun is shining and the hydroelectric dams are running, and release it when needed.

More than 80% of Malawi’s electricity comes from renewables and the country has been increasing energy by adding solar power while decommissioning 78 megawatts (MW) of diesel generation. But climate impacts like storms disrupt the grid and threaten to reverse the gains of energy conversion.

When Tropical Storm Ana hit Malawi in 2022, it hit the country’s shuttered power system hard, destroying a third of its electricity capacity and causing a nationwide system shutdown.

Even before the typhoon, Malawi’s electricity – which is largely generated from renewables including solar and hydro – has been unreliable for years, suffering from intermittent blackouts.

The government of Malawi now hopes to improve electricity stability by building a battery energy storage system (BESS) in its capital that will charge the surplus electricity produced when the sun is shining and the hydroelectric dams are running, and release it when needed.

More than 80% of Malawi’s electricity comes from renewables and the country has been increasing energy by adding solar power while decommissioning 78 megawatts (MW) of diesel generation. But climate impacts like storms disrupt the grid and threaten to reverse the gains of energy conversion.

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To ensure stable supply, Malawi is building a 20 MW/30 megawatt hour (MWh) battery storage system in Lilongwe with the help of the Global Energy Alliance (GEA), under Mission 300 – a campaign led by development banks and partners to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.

This project in Malawi aims to stabilize the country’s grid, speed up intermittent electricity supply, and reduce its reliance on diesel generators, as well as avoid 10,000 tons of carbon emissions per year.

Battery energy storage systems act as giant power banks, drawing in clean electricity during times of low demand and releasing it for use when demand is high or production is low. A typical BESS includes battery packs, converters that allow electricity to flow between the batteries and the grid, transformers, and cooling and safety systems.

Damola Omole, director of The ‘Grids of the Future, Africa’ program at GEA, a charity, said BESS provides “the flexibility needed to effectively integrate high levels of renewable energy” into the power grid. By doing so, it could reduce reliance on expensive diesel generation and protect consumers and industries from rising energy costs, he added.

Can BESS run African industries?

As calls for the development of green industries are growing in Africa, Omole said there is a need to prioritize the development of national grids through BESS to “transmit reliable, cost-effective power directly to commercial groups”.

While financiers had previously doubted that solar and wind renewables could meet industrial production needs, the utility-scale BESS showed that renewables can deliver “as predictable, stable results as traditional fuel-based energy”, he added.

In recent years, African leaders, including William Ruto of Kenya, Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, have called on the continent to use the energy revolution to advance the creation of green industries and to profit from its resources at home.

At a mining investment conference in Nairobi in April, Ruto said that Africa has been sitting back for too long but will now work together to process its minerals on the continent. “We will refine them here and we will produce them here,” he told African ministers and business executives.

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However, high-quality energy distribution to support this industrial ambition has long been a problem, while some 600 million Africans still lack electricity. BESS can therefore be a key technology in the continent’s development drive, say experts.

Michael Iwu, the business development manager for West Africa at Empower New Energy, which finances and develops renewable energy, said BESS challenges the issue that solar and wind power alone cannot provide enough reliable electricity to run factories and other industries that consume electricity. Modern battery systems can now support business operations for several hours, helping to maintain production during grid outages, he added.

For GEA’s Omole, the key question has shifted to how quickly countries can build the battery storage, grid infrastructure and market structures needed to unlock renewable energy.

BESS to help renewables move away from fossil fuels

Although BESS is in its early stages of deployment in Africa, interest is growing as countries look for ways to make renewable energy more reliable.

South Africa is leading the way with the largest BESS and the first of its kind on the continent. Capable of providing up to five hours of uninterrupted power, the system keeps homes and businesses running in Worcester, a southwestern city of more than 100,000 people.

Egypt is also investing heavily in battery storage. In 2025, the country launched its first scale BESS, a 300-MWh plant combined with a 500 MW solar plant in the southern city of Aswan. It also committed more than $1 billion to strengthening its electric grid and revising legislation to support battery storage projects.

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Falling battery prices are helping to drive the rapid deployment of energy storage. According to BloombergNEF, stationary storage battery packs (used in BESS) cost an average of $70 per kilowatt-hour by 2025, down 45% from 2024.

BESS’s role in supporting the integration of wind and solar grids could soon reduce reliance on fossil fuels and help the world meet low-cost climate goals, according to the GEA report released in April.

Stephen Nicholls, director of African Energy Futures based in South Africa, said the speed of technological development and the decreasing cost of BESS is attracting increasing attention.

He said the development of the latter could strengthen the role of renewables in industrial energy systems. While most commercial and utility-scale battery systems currently offer about four to eight hours of storage, Nicholls said researchers are developing units that can store electricity for longer.

“The cheaper the storage and the longer the storage time, the bigger it is [BESS] it will replace fossil fuels like gas,” he added.

Limited awareness and data

However, significant obstacles to the implementation of BESS still stand in the way of its great potential. Empower New Energy’s Iwu said limited awareness of BESS’s resource level, as well as financial concerns and a lack of long-term performance data continue to dampen investment across Africa.

Governments and developers need to build more pilot projects and demonstration sites to generate evidence of the technology’s value and benefits and increase confidence among investors and policy makers, he added. To measure BESS, we need to “continue to integrate this [evidence] let’s keep talking about it and check it,” said Iwu.

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To help address those obstacles, Omole said the BESS Consortium under the Global Energy Alliance is working with governments, development banks and other technology partners to de-risk the sector from private financiers by presenting evidence from early projects, mobilizing public funds to attract private investment, and introducing policies that make battery storage viable for commercialization.

“This coordinated action helps African countries overcome legacy infrastructure constraints, integrate large amounts of clean energy, and secure the reliable power needed to develop large-scale industries,” Omole explained.