When an eritrean solar salesman called Kidane Tesfamichael arrived in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), in 2017 he spoke neither French nor Sango, the official languages. He had no means of transport, in a country roughly the size of Texas with only a few hundred kilometres of paved road. And he had no office, so he built himself a single-room bungalow in a car park. To find clients for his firm’s main product, an inverter to turn solar power into electricity, he simply knocked on doors.

Today Mr Kidane manages an office with 40 employees and solar-energy projects all over the country. What he has achieved in CAR, one of the world’s poorest and most unstable countries, his colleagues at Aptech Africa, where he was an early employee, have repeated across the continent. When the solar-engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm was launched in South Sudan in 2011, its two Eritrean founders had just $20,000 between them. By 2023, Aptech was worth perhaps $50m, with offices in nine African countries from Sierra Leone to Congo and operations in 20 more. Soon it will open shop in Papua New Guinea, starting an expansion far beyond the continent’s shores.

Aptech is riding the crest of several important trends. One is the growth of home-grown African multinationals. In recent years direct investment from outside the continent has fallen, with foreign investors taking fright at political instability and currency volatility. In the riskier sort of markets in which Aptech specialises, the firm often faces limited competition. When civil war erupted in South Sudan in 2013, rebels looted the firm’s stock. “We lost everything,” recalls Ghirmay Abraham, one of its founders. But while others fled, Aptech stayed put. Soon they were taking over projects abandoned by their rivals.

A second trend is a boom in Africa’s solar-power industry. Last year the continent saw a record increase in solar-panel use (though most of this was in South Africa). In Uganda, where Aptech has its headquarters, 38% of the population reported using solar power in 2020, compared with just 18% in 2017. For Aptech, whose main clients in countries like CAR are donors and aid agencies targeting under-served populations, the key factor when considering where to expand is the national electrification rate, explains Mr Ghirmay. Less than 0.5% of rural Central Africans had power to light their homes in 2022, according to the World Bank.

A final trend is innovation in Africa’s burgeoning solar industry. As the number of local solar EPCs has grown, many now design their own products, notes Joyce Nkuyahaga, a Ugandan analyst. In Uganda Aptech introduced a pay-as-you-go solar water-pump in partnership with a local firm. Next year it will launch an assembly plant to make its own lithium-ion batteries.

Unlike more high-profile startups in Africa, Aptech has grown without much foreign capital. It has only recently registered a holding company in Mauritius to more easily attract overseas investors. And though it has received money from the British government in the past, in general “we don’t want to spend our time applying for grants”, says Mr Ghirmay. After all, Aptech’s rise is a reminder that success in Africa need not rely on outside help.