Navigating Nigeria: Insider Tips for Expats

The first quarter of 2026 delivered a series of project awards that, taken together, reveal the structure of Nigeria's distributed energy procurement pipeline with unusual clarity. The Rural Electrification Agency, operating through the World Bank-supported Utility Enabled Projects programme, announced successful bidders for interconnected mini-grid deployments. A N9 billion disbursement pushed solar mini-grids into four states that have not historically been centres of renewable energy deployment. And in Kano, a 1 MWp rooftop solar and 2.15 MWh battery system at a rice mill demonstrated what project execution looks like when developers, technology providers, and local EPC contractors coordinate effectively. For equipment manufacturers, EPC contractors, and project developers tracking where procurement budgets are being allocated in Nigeria's distributed energy sector, the Q1 2026 project announcements provide a map of who is buying, what they are buying, and how the supply ch...

Two weeks ago, a man named Ibrahim sent me a LinkedIn request. His profile said he ran a small solar installation business in Kano, northern Nigeria. I almost ignored it. My inbox is full of pitches I don’t remember signing up for. But his note was different. It was short and blunt. “I keep seeing your posts about energy markets. Do you know if any serious solar exhibition is happening in Nigeria this year? I need to find better suppliers. The ones I have now take four months to deliver and their warranties mean nothing. Please, if you know something, just tell me.” I wrote back the same afternoon and mentioned three words: NNEPIE, Lagos, September . He replied within minutes. “I am coming.” Ibrahim is not unique. In the past two months, I have received variations of the same question from a cold-chain operator in Onitsha, a pharmacist in Ilorin, and a Chinese panel manufacturer I met years ago at a trade show in Dubai. Everyone is looking for the same thing: a ...