Solar development in Africa often stumbles due to a lack of proper planning and long-term government support, according to a study of Nigerian solar projects published last month in the journal Renewable Energy.

The researchers behind the study are now turning their attention to solar policies in Ghana.

“So many projects fail because, when we talk about solar parks in Africa, most of the time people think this is just about finding an empty plot of land and implementing a project,” said study lead Eugene Ikejemba, an engineering PhD student at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. They rarely think about how a project will be managed once it is built.

“Despite undergoing rapid economic growth, Nigeria and Ghana still fail to provide affordable energy to an increasingly affluent population,” SciDevNet reports. “Nigerian households have, on average, access to less than 600 kilowatt hours a year of electricity, compared with a global average of nearly 3,500 kilowatt hours a year.”