MOPO, a pay-per-use battery technology company based in Sheffield, UK, but focused on Africa, has reached an understanding with Nigeria for a $75 million (approx. ₦120 billion) expansion, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing a statement by the firm.
The deal allows MOPO to team up with the Rural Electrification Agency—the government department responsible for deepening access among the unserved and underserved—on a pilot programme that will run through this year. The project is scheduled for delivery in 2030.
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MOPO, regarded as the largest provider of battery rental services on the continent, uses off-grid solar power stations with recharging facilities to distribute energy to users through local agents. Customers rent these batteries for use at home, in business, and for other purposes. Key partners comprise the UK’s biggest energy supplier, Octopus Energy; the Norwegian Government Fund, Norfund; and the International Finance Corporation.
“We solve a lot of the problems that mini-grids and solar home systems struggle with,” Luke Burras, MOPO’s chief operating officer, was quoted as saying. “We rent batteries to customers for hours. We’re not asking them to buy an asset, as in the case of solar home systems, and we’re not asking investors to place a huge bet on their future usage, as with mini-grids.”
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Nigeria’s rising climate tech profile
The deal is positive news for Nigeria, the country with the world’s largest absolute electricity access deficit, where reliance on noisy gasoline generators as an alternative to frequent grid power failure has complicated the path of transition to clean energy and hindered efforts to tame the climate crisis.
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MOPO’s latest bet on Nigeria affirms the growing attention that Africa—which receives the smallest share of global climate finance—is attracting from the rest of the world, even though it is among the lowest contributors to climate change. The continent accounts for 2 to 4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but receives just a tenth of the annual climate funding it requires.
Last week, emerging market-focused intelligence and data platform Briter and its research partners disclosed in the latest edition of “The State of ClimateTech in Africa” that climate tech has surpassed fintech as Africa’s top venture-funding sector. This suggests that climate tech has finally reached an inflexion point in Africa and, if properly leveraged, could help turn the tide on international apathy towards climate finance on the continent.
“Between 2016 and 2025, the sector represented roughly 22% of total venture funding on the continent, with its share of annual investment rising from 13% in 2016 to nearly 40% in 2025,” the report noted. Between 2016 and 2025, ClimateTech companies raised approximately $6.35 billion across 779 companies. Annual funding increased from $206 million across 28 companies in 2016 to more than $1.5 billion across 223 companies in 2025.”
Nigeria is second only to Kenya in terms of the venture capital attracted by climate tech, accounting for 12.9% of Africa’s cumulative capital inflows over the six years to 2025. MOPO rents out more than 7.5 million of its batteries annually across six countries in Africa, including Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Liberia, according to information on its website.
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