ABA Editorial · Jul 29, 2025 · 3 min read
Solar home systems operator Sun King has closed a USD 156 million securitization deal with Citi to fund expansion of its pay-as-you-go solar services in Kenya, the largest such financing in African off-grid solar history.
Sun King, the pay-as-you-go solar energy company operating across Africa and Asia, has closed a USD 156 million securitization deal to expand its pay-as-you-go solar services in Kenya. The transaction, backed by Citi, is the largest off-grid solar securitization in Africa to date and is expected to support the deployment of over 1.5 million solar home systems bringing electricity to more than 6 million people.
The structure bundles expected repayments from Sun King's Kenyan customer contracts into an asset-backed financial product that commercial investors can fund directly, converting the small daily mobile money payments that rural customers make into large-scale funding streams. This is the first securitization of its kind in Africa's off-grid solar market, according to industry coverage of the transaction.
The deal is significant beyond the individual transaction because it establishes a financial template that other off-grid solar operators and other African markets can potentially replicate. Historically, commercial banks were largely disengaged from the pay-as-you-go solar sector due to concerns about costs and perceived risk of lending to low-income rural customers. The Sun King securitization provides evidence that asset-backed structures can channel commercial capital into the sector at scale.
Sun King, formerly known as Greenlight Planet, serves nearly 10 million individual customers across Africa and Asia and has sold over 27 million solar products during its operational history. The company raised USD 330 million in equity funding in 2022 and has continued to expand its financing mix through additional debt and securitization transactions. In May 2025, Sun King closed an additional USD 80 million debt facility with the International Finance Corporation and Stanbic IBTC Bank focused on Nigerian expansion.
The Kenya securitization comes as off-grid solar operators are increasingly being viewed as essential delivery mechanisms for the World Bank and African Development Bank Mission 300 initiative to connect 300 million Sub-Saharan Africans to electricity by 2030. The International Energy Agency has identified Kenya as one of the few Sub-Saharan African countries on track for near-universal electricity access by 2030, with distributed solar playing a central role in the country's rural electrification.
Sun King said the transaction will allow it to continue scaling operations without relying solely on additional equity fundraising rounds, supporting what the company described as a financial template that other countries and operators can potentially adapt.