The African Development Bank Group has approved a financing package of up to $184.1 million to support development of the Obelisk solar project in Egypt — a 1-gigawatt photovoltaic plant paired with a 200MWh battery energy storage system. When operational, it will be the largest solar power plant on the African continent.
Inside the financing
The $184.1 million package breaks down as:
- $125.5 million in ordinary AfDB resources
- $20 million from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA)
- $18.6 million from the Canada–African Development Bank Climate Fund
- $20 million from the Climate Investment Funds' Clean Technology Fund
Output and timeline
The project is expected to be fully operational by the third quarter of 2026 and will generate an estimated 2,772 gigawatt-hours of clean, reliable, and affordable energy annually to the Egyptian national grid.
For context, that output is enough to meet the typical electricity demand of roughly a million Nigerian households for a year, putting the project in the rare class of solar developments that materially shift national energy mixes.
A regional signal
Obelisk's combination of utility-scale PV with grid-scale storage points to where African solar is heading: not just generation, but dispatchable solar — power that can be dispatched after sunset and during peak demand. The same model is now being studied for several Nigerian and South African projects in early-stage planning.