In 2015, Akon Lighting Africa, the solar energy project co-founded by the Senegalese-American singer Akon, announced a Solar Academy in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Its purpose was to train African engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs to install, run and maintain solar power systems, so that the skills to keep the lights on would stay in local hands. The plan was presented in May 2015 at the second United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Forum in New York, and the project's own website reports that the academy was inaugurated in Bamako in December 2015.
The headline figure often attached to the story, solar power for 600 million Africans, was never the number of people the project served. It was roughly the number of people across Africa who lacked electricity at the time, and the scale of the problem the founders said they hoped to help tackle. Here is what Akon Lighting Africa is, what the academy set out to do, what the project has achieved, and why access to power on the continent remains such a big issue.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
What is Akon Lighting Africa?
Akon Lighting Africa was launched in February 2014 by three co-founders: Akon (born Aliaune Thiam), the entrepreneur Samba Bathily and Thione Niang. Akon was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but spent much of his childhood in Senegal, which he calls his hometown.
The initiative focuses on practical, relatively low-cost equipment: solar-powered street lights, small solar home kits and micro-grids for villages that are far from the national grid. Bathily's company, Solektra International, supplies much of the hardware. Rather than relying on donations, the founders arranged financing through a credit line from China Jiangsu International Economic and Technical Cooperation Group, which lets participating governments buy solar equipment and repay over time. The project's website describes this as a $1 billion credit line.
Inside the Solar Academy in Bamako
The academy grew from a simple problem. Installing solar panels is only the beginning; the systems need people who can design them, wire them, repair them and run small energy businesses around them. Without that local expertise, equipment that breaks may never be fixed.
The Bamako centre was designed to fill that gap by offering hands-on training with expert instructors and real equipment. Its focus included:
- Installing and maintaining solar street lights and home systems.
- Building and operating micro-grids that serve whole villages.
- Developing small businesses that sell, install and service solar products.
- Encouraging graduates to adapt technology to local conditions and invent their own solutions.
Mali was a natural location. Like much of the Sahel, it receives some of the strongest sunlight on Earth, and at the time a large share of its rural population had no electricity at all. The project's website later invited applicants to further training sessions in Bamako in 2016, which suggests the academy was running courses after its opening.
Co-founder Samba Bathily summed up the thinking at the launch: "We have the sun and innovative technologies to bring electricity to homes and communities. We now need to consolidate African expertise."
What the project says it has achieved
By 2015, Akon Lighting Africa reported operating in 14 countries, later 15, including Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Benin and Sierra Leone. Its website lists figures such as 100,000 solar street lamps, 1,200 solar micro-grids, more than 100,000 home solar kits, around 480 communities covered and roughly 5,500 jobs, mostly for young people trained to install and maintain equipment. In Benin, for example, it reports installing 1,500 street lamps and 2,000 kits in the Pahou district.
The project also won recognition, including Clean Energy Project of the Year at African Utility Week in 2016 and a Global Good Award at the BET Awards the same year.
These numbers come from the project itself and have not been independently audited. Akon's own estimates have varied widely: in one interview he spoke of reaching around 1 million households, and in another he estimated about 100,000 households and 13,000 street lights. Neither figure is close to 600 million people. That does not make the work insignificant, but it is a reason to read the claims with care.
Why electricity access in Africa matters
Electricity is not a luxury. It powers lights for children to study after dark, refrigerators for vaccines in clinics, water pumps, phone charging and the small machines that let businesses grow. Without it, families often spend a large share of their income on kerosene, candles and batteries, which are more expensive per hour of light and, in the case of kerosene, can be dangerous to breathe.
Progress has been real but uneven. According to the World Bank's 2025 energy access tracking report, about 565 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lacked electricity in 2023, most of them in rural areas. The share of the population with access rose from about a third in 2010 to just over half in 2023.
Off-grid solar and mini-grids have become central to closing that gap. Extending national grids to scattered villages is slow and costly, while solar kits and small local grids can be installed in weeks. Between 2020 and 2022, decentralised systems accounted for more than half of new electricity connections in the region. Training local technicians, the idea behind the Bamako academy, is exactly what this model depends on.
A fair assessment of celebrity-led projects
Akon Lighting Africa attracted praise for using its founders' fame and networks to draw attention and financing to a neglected problem. It is also fair to note the limits. Headlines inflated its reach, its results rely heavily on self-reported figures, and loan-based financing means governments take on debt for the equipment.
Akon's later ventures have also given critics pause. His plan for "Akon City", a futuristic city in Senegal announced in 2018, made little visible progress; after years of delays and pressure from Senegal's state tourism company, the project was officially abandoned in 2025. That was a separate venture from the lighting project, but it is a reminder to judge every celebrity initiative by verifiable results rather than announcements.
The underlying idea of the Solar Academy remains a sound one: lasting change in energy access comes less from donated equipment than from local people with the skills to build, repair and run it.
Sources: Wikipedia: Akon Lighting Africa; Akon Lighting Africa (official site); Wikipedia: Akon; Wikipedia: Energy in Africa (citing the World Bank's Tracking SDG7 2025 report). Story first reported via The Anti-Media (by Cassius Methyl), citing The Root.
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