Our Work
Or search all of the site's content.
What We Do
About Us
GOGLA Members
This piece draws on insights from the SDG 7 Expert Group Meeting (Geneva, March 2026), convened by UN-Energy and UNECE, at which Patrick Tonui represented GOGLA and the off-grid solar sector.
The 2026 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF, the UN’s central platform for reviewing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals) convened in New York this month to review SDG 7, the global goal of affordable, reliable, and modern energy for all. This is the final full review before the 2030 deadline, and comes at a moment when the official headline (92% global electricity access) masks a more uncomfortable truth:
Global electrification has stalled.
Under current policies, 640 million people will still lack electricity by 2030, almost unchanged from today. Moreover, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the gap is widening. Roughly 85% of the 655 million people still without electricity live in Africa.
If we truly want to make a push to achieve SDG 7 goals, we will find the pathway through off-grid solar and distributed renewable energy (DRE). The SDG 7 Tracking Report is direct on this: DRE, such as decentralised solar, mini-grids, and solar home systems operating independently of a national grid, can meet demand faster and at lower cost, while simultaneously boosting productive uses of electricity across health, agriculture, and education.
Yet while the draft HLPF Ministerial Declaration acknowledges off-grid and decentralised systems as contributors to SDG 7, it does not treat them as a primary delivery route on equal footing with grid expansion. This was a missed opportunity, but it does not need to deter governments and their partners from investing wisely.
As global leaders consider how to accelerate the realization of SDG 7, a parallel and equally important conversation is converging and influencing national and global priorities related to realizing inclusive and sustainable social and economic development.
Getting there requires clear answers to two questions that national electrification plans have not always handled well: Energy for Who? (reaching every person, institution, and enterprise left behind) and Energy for What? (ensuring the energy delivered is deliberately designed to support health, livelihoods, and economic opportunity, not just count as a connection).
The people, communities and facilities without electricity are largely geographically dispersed, often in fragile or conflict-affected contexts, and structurally beyond the reach of conventional delivery models.
In rural areas, a grid connection can cost USD 1,000-2,500 per household, up to twelve times the cost of a quality solar home system. Where grid extension is not viable, at least within the next decade, off-grid solar is the primary delivery option.
Yet most electrification strategies and finance still flow toward technologies that national planners understand best: grid extension and large infrastructure. Solar home systems, which serve the most rural and least visible communities, consistently lose when they compete with utility-scale projects for the same budget envelope. The hardest to reach communities end up last in every queue.
Off-grid solar is already the least-cost solution for 40% of the people who still need to be connected by 2030. The question is whether the planning, finance, and policy systems around it will be designed to deliver. The policy recommendation is clear: DRE must be fully integrated into electrification plans, not treated as a residual category.
The hardest-to-reach communities need what everyone else needs: light to study by, power to keep medicine cold, energy to run a business, irrigation for crops. A connection is not the conclusion. The question is what energy infrastructure will actually enable, for a household, a farm, a clinic, a school, a business, and whether it is designed for those outcomes from the start.
This is productive use of energy.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of jobs are in the informal economy. Productive use is already happening at the household and microenterprise level: farmers using solar irrigation pumps, traders extending business hours by solar light, small shops keeping produce fresh. These activities are the backbone of most African economies and the primary sources of income for millions.
Technology advancements are driving adoption. Battery prices have fallen by more than 90% since 2010, reaching record lows in 2025. Lithium-ion batteries now dominate the off-grid market and last eight to ten years. Today’s solar home systems are future-ready, capable of powering homes, microbusinesses, farms, and digital devices. Entry-level systems can irrigate crops, cool produce, and provide internet access. Smaller systems now support greater productivity than ever before.
The SDG 7 Tracking Report identifies productive use as critical to the economic and fiscal case for access. It also notes this has yet to be tested at sufficient scale. GOGLA’s 2025 Global Off-Grid Solar Market Report confirms this: when systems are designed for productive use, bundled with appliances, and supported by appropriate financing, the economic multiplier is real. GOGLA affiliates currently support 7.4 million people in undertaking more economic activity, 3.8 million small and micro-enterprises, and have generated nearly $11 billion in cumulative additional income since 2010.
More than 560 million people already rely on off-grid solar solutions worldwide. Off-grid solar accounted for 55% of new electricity connections in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2020 and 2022. More than 560 million people already rely on off-grid solar solutions worldwide. In 2025, the sector recorded its highest-ever annual sales volume: 10.2 million solar energy kits sold, serving 149 million people through GOGLA affiliates alone.
Mission 300, which aims to connect 300 million people by 2030, envisions that off-grid solutions can deliver half of the goal. Solar home systems, productive use solar, and mini-grids, appear by name across most of the Mission 300 National Energy Compacts, each government’s own commitment under the initiative. But the gap between declaration and delivery is the pattern to watch, as only a handful of governments translated off-grid ambitions into funded targets, and fewer still into a contracted instrument with a confirmed market response. The same gap is visible in the HLPF Ministerial Declaration itself: the action framework names grid expansion as an essential enabler of universal access but does not yet name off-grid and decentralised solutions alongside it.
The climate case is equally clear. DRE is the fastest, cleanest, most scalable path to energy access for climate-vulnerable communities. Scaling off-grid solar could lead to climate-positive growth, while strengthening energy security and reducing reliance on imported fuels. Africa’s green transition could generate up to 84.5 million jobs by 2050, with the off-grid and DRE sector already supporting hundreds of thousands of positions and on track to create more than 400,000 additional jobs by 2030.
The 2030 deadline leaves no room for another round of good intentions and slow delivery. The Ministerial Declaration adopted in New York this month acknowledges off-grid and decentralised systems as contributors to SDG 7. That recognition is a foothold. What matters now is whether governments and development partners choose to act on it.
GOGLA calls on governments leaving New York this month to implement that commitment fully, treating off-grid solar and distributed renewable energy as primary electrification infrastructure on equal footing with grid expansion, in every national plan, investment strategy, and programme design that follows.
The 40% of people best reached by off-grid solutions deserve the same policy commitment as those served by grid extension. Several countries presenting Voluntary National Reviews at this HLPF, including Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda, have already demonstrated what well-designed DRE programmes deliver.
When governments and planners ask Energy for Who? and Energy for What?, and answer those questions honestly, they will find that off-grid solar has a critical place at the SDG 7 table. Universal access means more than a connection. It means the power to run a business, irrigate a field, keep a clinic open after dark, and build toward the future these communities are already working for.
HLPF is the first moment in a critical sequence. The Global Off-Grid Solar Forum & Expo convenes in Kigali in October, where the companies, investors, and policymakers driving DRE deployment will gather to translate commitments into delivery. COP31 in Antalya in November will place energy access on the same table as climate mitigation and adaptation. The signal sent in New York this month will determine whether off-grid solar arrives at both moments as a proven, primary solution, or as a technology still waiting to be taken seriously.
GOGLA and our members are ready to scale. Demand is real. The technology is ready. The open question is whether the systems around it will be designed to match.
The GOGLA newsletter is for everyone who wants to keep abreast of the latest developments in the off-grid solar and electrification sector.
