On an early May morning, 55-year-old Alhaji Bashir Sule walks excitedly through his five-hectare farm in Kano State, northwest Nigeria, watching a solar-powered pump gush water into the fields.
Bashir used a water pump powered by fossil fuels to irrigate his farm for over a decade, but rising fuel costs became a burden. In Nigeria, 140 million people equivalent to (63 percent of the population) live below the poverty line. After the government ended the national fuel subsidy in 2023, the dramatic rise in fuel prices led to higher costs for transporting goods, which affects the entire food production and supply chain. Even staple foods are becoming unaffordable for many households, and rural communities across the country are at the brink of hunger crisis.
Many of Bashir’s neighbors in the Bauje farming community don’t even cultivate their land in the dry season because they can’t afford the fuel.
“I spent about ₦12,000 [US$8.70] every three days on petrol to irrigate this land last year,” Bashir said. “This is why most of my neighbors didn’t use their lands because they can’t afford the amount. But now, with just ₦2,500 [US$1.80] per day, my rice farm is always wet.”
As Nigeria’s rural farmers reckon with rising fuel prices and increasingly irregular rainfall patterns tied to climate change, more of them are turning to solar-powered irrigation to save and earn more money.
Adopting solar-powered irrigation helps farmers like Bashir cut fuel costs by more than 60 percent while extending their growing seasons and boosting crop yields, according to the Energy Commission of Nigeria.
Among more than 10,000 smallholder farmers who tried solar irrigation in the rural northwestern state of Kebbi, over 70 percent reported higher incomes, researchers from the YELF Climate Trust Foundation told the Nigeria Guardian earlier this year. Farmers saw their crop yields rise and operational costs drop, and most saved more money with solar compared to other energy sources for irrigation, the study found.
Improving incomes while curbing emissions
In Sauki Dabula, another community in Kano State, 39-year-old farmer Saidu Abba also saw healthier crops and bigger payouts when he switched from a petrol-powered water pump to solar for irrigation. Last year, the cucumber and maize he harvested from his two-hectare farm were smaller in size because he couldn’t afford enough petrol to keep the pump running.
“If not for this solar, with the way the petrol price is surging, the crops might have even become much more stunted than last year’s because I can’t afford the price,” Abba said.
Ibrahim Badamasi, 36, also saw improved harvests at his onion farm in Sauki Dabula. He usually gets three or four large sacks of onions from the farm each season. “This year, as a result of proper irrigation, I made six similar sacks from the same farm,” he said.
Nigeria’s National Economic Council is now urging more farmers to use solar and has directed the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning to fund the production and distribution of pumps to farmers across the country. And Horti Nigeria, a Dutch-funded program working to enhance food and nutrition security, has already provided solar irrigation systems to more than 2,000 farmers in Ogun, Oyo, Kaduna and Kano states.
Along with helping farmers grow more food, expanding access to solar-powered irrigation reduces the use of diesel generators on farms, which emit greenhouse gases and harm local air quality.
Nigeria’s agricultural sector creates nearly 86 million tons of carbon equivalent emissions each year, roughly three times the annual emissions of Nigeria’s commercial and economic hub, Lagos. Along with contributing to climate change, the country’s federal government says emissions from agriculture are driving a severe public health crisis through air pollution.
Rural communities can feel it.
Nearby resident Haruna Muhammad said the fumes from Abba’s old petrol pump often blew in his face as he passed by the farm. “The air around his farm was discomforting, but why would I be the only one to speak it out,” he said. “But when, in the last few months, I noticed that he replaced the petrol-powered pump with a solar-powered one, I felt happier.”
Similarly, at Bauje, Bashir described the air around his rice farm as “sickening” when the petrol pump was on. “When I was using a fuel-based pump, I rarely spent an hour in the farm,” he said. “But now, whenever I come visiting, I could spend hours because the air quality has improved.”
Increasing access could lessen brutal climate impacts
Agriculture accounts for about 22 percent of Nigeria’s gross domestic product and more than a third of its total employment. Farming is the backbone of rural livelihoods and national food security, as the majority of the country’s staple foods are produced domestically. Yet Nigeria’s rural farmers are threatened by the worsening impacts of climate change, including heatwaves and irregular rainfall that ravages fields with both floods and drought.
In this context, solar-powered irrigation systems offer multiple benefits: They extend the growing season by allowing farmers to irrigate their crops when the fields go dry, while reducing the use of polluting diesel fuel. If solar-powered water pumps were used across all of Nigeria’s irrigated maize fields, that alone would eliminate 4 million tons of carbon emissions annually.
John Olaoye, a professor in the department of agricultural and biosystems engineering at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, agrees that solar-powered irrigation systems are a promising solution for farmers, but only if rural communities are actually able to access it. And access remains an issue.
While solar generators and irrigation eliminate regular petrol purchases, the high upfront cost of these systems is often too much for smallholder farmers, meaning most dry-season farmers in Bauje and Sauki Dabula still use petrol generators to irrigate their lands.
When Bashir checked the prices earlier this year, the lowest he could find was more than half a million Nigerian naira, too high for him to afford. Instead, he was able to rent his solar system from Women In Mechanized Agriculture (WIMA). The Nigerian nonprofit rents solar equipment to small-scale, male farmers and uses the income to fund women-focused agricultural programs in other parts of the country, as cultural norms often limit women in northern states like Kano from operating farming machinery.
Bashir expects the solar setup to save him money, even with the cost of renting it. “I’m still excited about it because it saved me the worries about fuel costs,” he said.
But cost isn’t the only barrier for farmers when it comes to using solar. Though they pollute less, solar irrigation systems are often new technology for rural communities, so there’s typically a learning curve in making them work on the farm.
When Bashir first rented his system, for example, he worried it would be stolen if left unattended in the fields overnight, so he opted to carry the panels from his home to the farm every day. “The panels are large, and one day while carrying them on my motorcycle to the farm, one of them slipped away,” he said. “A part of it broke and it stopped working.” He had to pay to replace it, which led him to hire a local security guard instead. “Not every farmer can afford that,” he added.
A shortage of local technicians to repair malfunctioning solar equipment is also a growing challenge that can hinder more widespread adoption in rural communities, said Muhammad Hamza Abubakar, a Nigerian sustainable agriculture and agribusiness strategist.
Though the Nigerian government is exploring subsidies for solar-powered pumps, experts like Hamza say more policy support and federal funding are needed to meet the need among farmers.
For those who have been able to access the technology ahead of this year’s dry season, it has made all the difference. “If not for this solar intervention, farming would’ve been very much difficult for me this year,” Abba said. “I’m glad I came in contact with it and hope the government makes it easily accessible to everyone.”
As he walked through the field, a fluttering Kaftan rustling against his rice plants, Bashir shared similar hopes of more investment to support Kano State’s smallholder farmers. “It’s my life,” he said. “We’re intentional about what we do.”
