WEC Advisers on Wednesday convened senior leaders from across Nigeria’s electricity distribution sector at the Smart Grid Workshop in Abuja, where it shared a validated framework for modernizing the country’s distribution networks and where the Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) and project partners signed two agreements to take a pilot into delivery

Nigeria’s distribution companies share a common set of constraints: aging infrastructure, high technical and commercial losses, low metering coverage, and limited real-time visibility of their networks. The Grid Modernization Framework (GMF), developed under the USGI project, responds to those constraints with a structured, needs-driven approach. Rather than treating modernization as a single equipment purchase, the framework sequences investments feeder by feeder, prioritizes visibility and revenue protection, and is designed so that early phases generate revenue to fund later ones.

The convening drew the breadth of the sector. A panel on whether smart grids can meet distribution companies’ most pressing needs featured Hussaini Sadiq, Chief Strategy Officer of KEDCO; Kolapo Joseph, Group Managing Director of Transgrid Enerco (which holds a majority stake in Eko Electricity Distribution Company); Oluseyi Lala, Divisional Chief Executive Officer of IPNX Business; and Tolu Owokade of Shyft Power Solutions. Distribution companies including Ikeja Electric, Eko Electricity Distribution Company and Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company took part alongside KEDCO, with the regulator NERC and the Rural Electrification Agency (REA). Development finance institutions and investors including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, GEAPP, the Development Bank of Nigeria and RIPLE attended, as did technology providers and developers including Shyft, Viathan Engineering, EM-One, IPNX and Network Nation UK.

Speaking on the panel, Hussaini Sadiq, Chief Strategy Officer at KEDCO, said the host distribution company was ready to prove the model: “This is not a mirage. It is already operational in other climes, and I believe we can achieve it here…We are happy to demonstrate it as the pilot distribution company.”

The case was echoed by other distribution companies in the room. “If you do not have visibility on your investments, you cannot make the right decisions,” said Kolapo Joseph, Group Managing Director of Transgrid Enerco. “Smart grid gives you that visibility, from the consumer, investor, and for the regulatory perspective… It is in our interest to do it, so we will do it.”

Opening the workshop on behalf of the UK Government, Lolade Awogbade, Green Growth Advisor at the FCDO, set the framework in the context of UK PACT’s work in Nigeria. “Through UK PACT, we are proud to support the development of Nigeria’s first scalable grid modernization framework,” she said. “It is designed to be phased, investable and scalable, starting with pilot feeders, generating evidence, and expanding progressively across the distribution companies. This is exactly the type of market shaping intervention UK PACT is designed to deliver, linking policy, finance and implementation in a practical, results-driven way.” 

WEC Advisers will now support KEDCO and its partners in taking the pilot through to implementation, with the framework available for replication across KEDCO’s wider feeder network and other Nigerian distribution companies that choose to adopt it.

Date: 11 June 2026