Energy

Somalilanders long paid among the highest electricity prices on Earth — $0.80 per kilowatt-hour in Hargeisa, peaking at $1.00 elsewhere — because power comes from fragmented, diesel-fired private producers with no national grid. That is starting to change: in December 2025 the government cut the tariff to a uniform $0.59 per kWh nationwide, and Berbera — where a World Bank-backed grid expansion is underway — now pays just $0.20. Berbera is the proof of what new capacity does to prices; the rest of the country, still paying roughly three times as much and several times what neighbors in Ethiopia or Kenya pay, is the market. Overhead sits a world-class resource: solar irradiation of 5.5–6.0 kWh/m² per day and coastal wind speeds of 7–9 m/s. Israel, which built its own energy engineering under the same sun, agreed in June 2026 to cooperate with Somaliland on exactly this.

Opportunity areas

• Utility-scale solar with storage

  Every project that displaces $0.59/kWh diesel power with ~$0.20/kWh solar is a cost-cutting machine with instant demand. Berbera — already down to $0.20 — sets the template; Hargeisa, Burao, and the corridor towns are the follow-on markets.

• Solar-hybrid conversion of the diesel IPPs

  The sector is a patchwork of private producers running diesel generators — natural joint-venture partners for solar-plus-battery retrofits that cut their fuel bill and their tariffs at once.

• Coastal wind development

  Average wind speeds of 7–9 m/s along the coast and escarpments are commercially strong by any standard. Berbera pairs the resource with the port logistics needed to bring turbines in.

• Commercial & industrial captive power

  Factories, hotels, cold-chain facilities, and the quarantine yards of the livestock trade all pay the same crushing tariffs — rooftop and captive solar is the fastest sale in the market.