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GOGLA’s Annual General Meeting brought the off-grid solar sector and its allies together for two days of roundtable sessions and candid conversations. Conversations consistently highlighted the challenge of meeting commercial goals and delivering at scale to the hardest-to-reach, and often poorest populations. The industry is scaling and consolidating with more capital concentrated among fewer players. The geographic markets are diverse, requiring both local and large players, the strategic use of new business models, and predictable subsidies to reach all populations and create long-term, durable energy access.
Here’s what GOGLA is carrying forward from the formal AGM sessions, the networking events, and everything in between:
Across nearly every table, conversations captured this shift. Off-grid solar is ultimately about enabling energy access, but the sector has too often measured business success against connection numbers rather than commercial viability or product durability.
Connection metrics that reflect reach must be supplemented with measures of durability for customers and sustainability for companies: profitability, sustained repayment rates, and after-sales service quality.
We also need stronger evidence of what energy access delivers economically. Off-grid solar has become one of the fastest-growing routes to electricity access, reaching hundreds of millions of households and enterprises where grid access remains slow, unreliable, or uneconomic. Yet real questions remain about how access translates into productivity, enterprise growth, and resilience, and how those effects can be measured, particularly in the informal economies where much of Africa’s economic activity takes place.
Governments, DFIs, and private investors are increasingly looking for interventions that support growth, resilience, and productivity. Meeting that demand means building evidence that is credible, policy-relevant, and feasible to generate at scale, not just in pilot form.
PAYGo, Energy-as-a-Service, cash sales, battery rental, productive-use bundling: the sector now runs on a genuine mix of models, each built to work best in different scenarios. PAYGo is consumer finance. EaaS is infrastructure finance. Each draws on different capital, and the two are not in competition.
GOGLA members were clear that debates over false competition do not advance access. In fact, public critiques of one model by advocates of another are pushing funders and investors away from both. The ask to GOGLA was direct: push back on harmful framing, and keep the sector narrative tied to outcomes, keeping the lights on, enabling economic productivity, and improving lives. Support any model that delivers on those outcomes while meeting GOGLA’s standards.
The clearest success stories this year came from governance, not necessarily financial innovations. Rwanda and Togo came up repeatedly as proof that credible government commitment outperforms clever subsidy design.
Off-grid solar companies need governments to develop and publish robust, transparent national electrification strategies, coupled with accountability metrics to verify that operators are delivering. Companies also need a seat at the table: a functioning channel for input into the regulatory decisions, large and small, that make or break a market.
Members converged on one structural principle: split markets by viability. Where returns can be achieved, let the private sector operate commercially. Where affordability makes returns impossible, that becomes a public-sector responsibility. Private operators can deliver the service and get paid for their expertise. They shouldn’t be expected to cross-subsidise it out of their own margins.
Results-Based Financing has become central to expanding energy access. However, a full day of practitioner roundtables surfaced structural problems creating friction and impeding progress:
These recommendations, alongside GOGLA’s earlier view on revamping RBFs, are now feeding directly into World Bank guidance on RBF design.
If there was one recurring “if only we had this” across the AGM, it was independent, sector-wide impact and market metrics. Granular information exists, but it doesn’t connect across companies, investors, or countries. The sector as a whole is likely working with a blurrier picture than each individual has.
Almost every other theme from the AGM runs into this gap eventually. Data would make progress on the above four topics faster and more credible.
Two concrete suggestions for GOGLA to lead on:
GOGLA left Cape Town with a clear mandate:
The relevant GOGLA Working Groups will carry each of these forward in the months ahead.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Cape Town, and congratulations to our newly re-elected Board members. The conversation continues in Kigali at #GOGSFE26.
The GOGLA newsletter is for everyone who wants to keep abreast of the latest developments in the off-grid solar and electrification sector.